


The Unchosen One

by tb_ll57



Series: Lemuria [2]
Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate universes (plural), Children of Characters, Clairvoyance, Cross-Generational Friendship, Empath, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Gundams, I love making up Gundam Wing politics, In that there are Newtypes in Gundam Wing, M/M, Mind Games, Newtypes (Gundam Wing), Politics, Preventers (Gundam Wing), Psychic Abilities, Psychic Bond, Psychic Violence, Riffing on that whole "Newtype" thing, Sad Romance, Space Battles, Telepathy, This is kind of like "Fringe" for Gundam Wing, i love politics, post - endless waltz, seriously a lot of politics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-17 21:02:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4681364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tb_ll57/pseuds/tb_ll57
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Preventers have welcomed the surviving Newtypes to a home on Earth - a heavily guarded home with barred windows, perhaps.  When new dangers come calling, Preventers call on the Newtypes to fight, and on Quatre Winner and Toru Peacecraft to lead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> The following is a sequel to ['Lemuria'](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1208785/chapters/2470387) and takes place about twenty years after _Endless Waltz_ , in AC 220.

For a woman with such pointy shoes, Relena moves very quietly.  A hand drops gently on Toru's shoulder, the first sign that his aunt has joined him at the breakfast table.  Relena lays an envelope beside his plate and circles the table to her own chair, settling herself with a practised sweep of her skirt.  'Good morning, darling,' she greets him, smiling.

Toru returns it.  'Good morning.'  He pours another cup of coffee from the press and passes it to her, and the sugar and cream.  'Did you sleep at all last night?'

The slight puffiness beneath her eyes is the only sign that she's about to lie to him, but Toru understands.  Relena is used to defending herself against any and every little comment like that; if she's pale, the papers say she's upset, if she's tired, the news calls her overwhelmed, if she's laughing, the tabloids say she's unserious.  Toru's only been in Sanq City two weeks, and he's heard the gamut of rude accusations.  He has a new appreciation of just how precarious her authority is, even in what used to be the capital of her own kingdom.

'Never quite enough,' his aunt admits honestly, sipping her coffee and reaching for a croissant.  'I know you did.  I saw you passed out on the sofa.'

He rubs at the faint blush he can feel on his cheek.  'Sorry.'

'Don't be sorry.  Believe me, I know the long hours get wearisome.'  Relena puts a second pastry on Toru's plate, and he grins at her.  His appetite is gaining fame even here.  'The letter's for you,' Relena says then.  'It's from Brussels.'

He checks the address, and recognises the handwriting.  'Quatre,' he says, and takes Relena's wave as permission to read at the table.  The letter's already been opened, of course, probably twice-- once at Preventers HQ and again in Relena's Security Office-- but after years of dealing with similar procedures he's past expecting fresh and unread correspondence.  Quatre is clever enough to bury anything important in inoccuous phrasing, anyway, and Toru suspects he leaves them little breadcrumbs of text on purpose, all part of the games Quatre plays with Preventers.

But there doesn't appear to be anything odd or unusual in today's letter.  Instead it's a chatty recital of the news from home, a collection of anecdotes on the daily life of a Newtype in Preventers custody.  Beatriz's goldfish died, making it the third in a month, and Quatre's tale of the frantic measures taken by Iva and Jemmy to secure another before she noticed, as well as a daring last-minute distraction arranged by Puneet that enabled them to get the new fish into the tank literally over Beatriz's little head, has Toru smiling as he reads.

'Everything well?' Relena asks.

'Yeah.'  Toru glances up at his aunt.  'Quatre sends his love,' he repeats dutifully.  'He also says to congratulate you on the passage of the Human Rights Bill renewal.'

'That's sweet,' Relena says, taking a bite of her croissant.

'He says he talked to Sally about extending my visa.'  Toru frowns at this.  'He didn't tell me he was asking about that.'

Relena doesn't quite meet his eyes.  'I'm afraid he's doing that on my request,' she murmurs, and Toru knows the way she lifts the coffee by cup and saucer is a way of occupying her hands to hide a nervous tic.  When Toru doesn't protest immediately, she adds, 'It's just been so lovely having you here, and I thought it would be lovelier still if you could stay through Christmas.  But I didn't want to launch an official request if it would cause any issues for you.  I asked Quatre to make a casual run at it.'

There's a lot of things that go unspoken in that.  That they have to take so much caution just to extend a visit with a blood relative.  It's not a visa issue, not really.  It's a Preventers issue.  Toru's the only Newtype they've allowed to leave Preventers HQ since they first gathered there nearly two years ago.  Getting him out the first time was a trial, and that had been for a long weekend on the back of a formal diplomatic request from his aunt.  They'd tried for a mini-break over winter holidays next, and Toru had had to report in twice daily and restrict himself to Palace grounds.  It's been a little smoother every time, but Toru knows Relena thinks Preventers could snatch it all away at any time, and deep down he knows it, too.  If it ever sounds like she'd try to keep him in Sanq City, Preventers would come fetching, and they'd bring the big guns.

He manages a smile of reassurance for Relena.  'Quatre says it's just awful I've got such a horrible bout of the flu that travel would be difficult.'

That makes her laugh, just as he was hoping, and he revels in it.  Relena almost never laughs, not genuine and untroubled like that, and it's a wonderful sound.  'We'll have to send you home with a litre of chicken soup to prove your cover story true, you know,' she says, lines crinkling at her eyes, and impulsively Toru wants to hug her, but she's on the other side of the table and he doesn't want to make her uneasy.  Sometimes when he makes a sudden move around her, she flinches, and when she looks at him in quiet moments he knows she sees his father.

The moment passes, anyway, and Relena's the one who moves on.  'Well, until we hear for certain, we'll treat it like your last few days.  I wanted to take you shopping in town--'

'Ma'am, the meeting with the Consul's been moved to two this afternoon,' says Marcel.  Relena's secretary has a habit of popping out of the shadows to deliver bad news, and Toru knocks his jam knife off his plate in startlement right on cue.

Relena's mouth goes tight.  'Move it again,' she says.

'This is the third reschedule, and he's leaving the country this evening.'

'It's okay,' Toru tells her.  'I like watching you work.  Maybe I could come?  If it's sensitive I won't stay in the room, but I like your offices.'  That's a white lie-- they're deathly dull, since he generally isn't cleared to hear anything important and her staff don't really know what to do with him but stash him in the lobby with a stack of magazines-- but it eases that hunted look in her eyes, and when she reaches across the table to press his hand, he doesn't regret the fib.  'Then shopping,' he says, 'but you know you don't have to spend money on me.'

'Someone does,' Relena retorts.  'You've got an inch of wrist showing in that shirt.  I can't believe you're still growing.'  Then again, she looks at his plate pointedly.  'On the other hand, maybe I can.  Fourths?'

'Don't want them to just throw it away,' Toru says innocently, and takes the last pastry.

 

 

**

 

Toru is usually the only civilian passenger on the flight that carries him between Sanq and the Preventers Headquarters Airfield in Brussels, Belgium.  They always assign his seat on his ticket, which is sort of amusing, since the small jet only seats six and he can't board until all active personnel are in.  The day after Christmas, it's only Toru and an older admin woman who spends the short hour typing on a netbook and ignoring his existence.  He has to wait for her to debark, too, and the pilot as well, before an agent beckons him down the steps onto the tarmac, and greets him with the impersonal flicker of suspicion that more or less comprises Preventers' general attitude toward the Newtypes.

His watch-list status earns him a car ride across base, which is not so much a privilege as a means of ensuring he actually goes where he's supposed to.  Every once in a while, it's an agent he recognises from his own short career, but more often it's a freshly-graduated cadet too young to have overlapped Toru at the Academy.  They don't talk much, as a rule, and Toru amuses himself by keeping score which ones seem to have heard of him by how much they flinch when he stares at the backs of their heads from the passenger bench.  The ones who are too new to know even that much legend about the Newtype infiltrator are scared polite for a different reason, one Toru remembers all too well from his own anxious probation.  They're just afraid of fucking something up on accident and getting sacked in some kind of nightmarish ancestor-shaming debacle.  He leaves those ones alone.  They'll grow up soon enough without his help.

Today his driver, a girl of maybe eighteen who sneakily eyes him in the dash mirror but hastily avoids his gaze when he returns the looks, takes the long way past blocks of unlit office buildings and largely empty barracks.  Even Headquarters barracks empty out for the hols.  Someone's strung fairy lights on the statue of Julius Hubrecht, and the hawk on the seven-foot tall seal in the Square is holding a sprig of mistletoe in one stylised claw.  One or two lonely souls are out jogging, olive-coloured hoodies thrown back to the icy December air.  Once, Toru would have waved as they passed, the way his driver does.  He doesn't, not anymore, but he hasn't stopped thinking about the old days yet, and wishes he could get over it.  Things won't ever be like that again for him, and he's not usually one for regrets.

His driver lets him out at Newtype Central, the barrack given over to their unusual crowd.  It's grown in comfort and security both since its hasty refurbishment two years ago.  The fake windows have long since given way to real glass, not that there's much of a view out here past the helo pads.  The lace curtains are drawn across most of the windows to the left, bedrooms and the nursery, but there's a light on in the workout room and Toru can see someone on a treadmill.  Toru steps out onto the gravel lot and liberates his luggage from the boot of the car.  Relena sent him home with two extra bags stuffed with new clothes he'll never wear, since he never goes anywhere but here.  There's a large package for Beatriz, nevermind Toru missed Christmas Day-- she's only two, and Christmas is every time someone else arrives to spoil her with gifts.  The smaller bundles are for everyone else, mostly cakes and sweets.  The Newtypes don't get off base to shop for gifts for each other, but Preventers generally let foodstuffs through to them without too much interference, and they've made something of a tradition out of baked goods.  Toru made sure to get some rarities to liven up the New Year.

There's no-one about to see him drag all his bags inside.  Toru makes it to his room, dropping off his things and then venturing further in for the main room.  The tree is still standing, string lights blinking, though the gifts are gone and there's a pile of crumpled wrapping paper waiting for disposal.  A small wading pool has been added to the corner, filled with about a handspan of water and floating a single rubber duckie.  The towels beneath the pool are damp, so Beatriz must have been playing recently.  She's probably at her nap now.  Toru sets her package where it will be immediately spotted, and puts all the others by the stockings hanging from the kitchen buffet.

He finds Quatre in the tanks.  The room is dark by design, the only part of the barracks where they'd actually bricked over the window and removed the light fixtures.  Votive candles shed a faint illusion of warmth along the far wall, where a man is sitting in a battered easy chair.  Toru takes the ottoman beside him, and the man's eyes open.

'How long as he been in there?' Toru asks, nodding toward the tanks.

Ishaq Khosa smiles at Toru.  'About two hours.  Welcome back.'

'Thanks.  Believe it or not, I missed it here.'  Toru listens for the quiet swish and drip of the water.  Even this close, he can't really see Quatre in the tank, but he can see the glow.  Faint, golden, misty, and man-shaped.  'That's not just meditation,' Toru says.

'He's been low.'

'You're watching him?'

'We all watch.'  Ishaq is calm when Toru glances at him.  'We care about him almost as much as you do,' he teases, very gently, and Toru hunches his shoulder.  He knows, but it's not the same.  He knows they watch, but Toru's the only one who can actually do anything about it when Quatre's at his worst, and he takes it as a personal duty.

Toru rises to strip his jumper and jeans, kicking his boots to the rug.  Ishaq follows him to the tank next to Quatre's, spotting him as he lowers himself into the water.  It's a bit cooler than the air of the room, and his skin prickles with momentary gooseflesh that soothes as he dunks the back of his head into the wet and lets the buoyant salt water lift him into an effortless float.  Ishaq runs the spigot for a moment, to warm the water, washing Toru's limbs with handfuls to acclimate him.  Toru accepts Ishaq's hands to either side of his head, a moment later, lowering the mask over his mouth and nose.  Oxygen scented with just the faintest whiff of jasmine to enhance brain waves.  Toru closes his eyes, lets the darkness swallow him, and falls into the deep well inside himself where his Newtype abilities live.

Or, rather, his Newtyke abilities.  There are state secrets better known than that one.  Preventers believe there are only Newtypes, men and women who achieved heightened mental gifts through military or Resistance experiments.  That's not entirely untrue, but it's not the whole story.  The whole story is an unknown quantity.  Newtykes, children of Newtypes, and whatever abilities they may or may not be born with.  So far as Preventers know, Toru's unusual amongst the Newtypes, but they don't know he's something else entirely.  The man who figured it all out is laying next to him, turning pruney from a long soak.

 _Quatre,_ Toru thinks, pushing the thought out to the tank next to his, and feels an answering jolt of electric heat.  _I'm here.  I'm back._

The shimmering presence at his left swells, and then Quatre's aura retreats, calms.  There's a faint blue throb, relief, relief from something very dark and hurt.

 _I thought you were doing all right,_ Toru says.  _I would have come back sooner if I'd known.  You should have written to me._

There's no real means of communication across the barrier of their minds.  Toru can speak, but none of the other Newtypes can, no matter how they work on developing it.  Sometimes Toru can sense Quatre's mood, but whether it's because Quatre projects it or Toru is learning some of Quatre's empathic ability they don't know.  But Toru's got an ability that's entirely natural, and it's taking mental leaps of logic when he's got a problem to solve.  He figured this one out almost a year ago.  He used to need touch to accomplish this, but in a state of enhanced relaxation in the tanks, he can do it with just his mind.  He reaches for Quatre, wraps himself around the other consciousness, and slips into the strange permeable nimbus of the glow, and follows it.

All at once he's flying.  Or, not quite flying, but moving, very quickly, skimming over earth and water and air as insubstantial as a ghost.  Toru struggles to orientate himself.  They tumble and whirl in those crazy acrobatic stunts that Quatre doesn't seem aware of when Toru asks him about it later; it's normal to him.  As normal as anything gets with Newtypes.

 _Quatre,_ he says.  _Come on.  Let's go home._

They settle back to earth in a slow graceful swoop.  A sense of loss haunts him, faint but distinct, like the jasmine he's breathing.  Then there's a hand on his shoulder, shaking him awake, and Toru looks up to see Ishaq bending over him with one of the lanterns.  Quatre's already out of his tank, drying off with a large towel.  Ishaq has one ready for Toru, and envelopes him in it when he rises from the water.

'Hey there,' Toru says, scrubbing his dripping hair.  He reaches again, physically this time, to squeeze Quatre's elbow.  'Happy Christmas.  Belated.'

Quatre smiles wearily for him.  'Happy Christmas, Toru.'

'So where was that?'

'Where was what?'  Quatre shrugs into a nubbly dressing gown and slippers.  Ishaq helps Toru over the lip of the tank, careful to keep him from slipping on the rubber mat, and herds Toru back to his clothes at the ottoman.  Toru figures out halfway through that dance that Ishaq is keeping himself firmly between the two of them.  It's protective, that nannying interference, but he's not sure which of them it's aimed it.  Toru frowns.

'Where were you trying to go?' he clarifies, dragging on his trousers over damp skin.  A glance at his watch shows nearly a half hour after he entered the tanks.  That's an unusually long time, for something as simple as catching up to Quatre's adventuring mind.

'Just some aimless wandering,' Quatre replies.

'Paris?' Toru says sharply, and Ishaq nudges at his knee with his shoes, pointedly.

'There's nothing of particular interest in Paris,' Quatre says, which is almost certainly a lie, but doesn't mean Toru's guess is correct, either.  He feels a prick of guilt for suggesting it, but he can't read Quatre's face in this dim, and he doesn't think Quatre's reading him, either.  But he shouldn't be able to at all, and Toru gives up the questions that don't really lead anywhere for the one that really needs an answer.

'Why'd you stop taking the serum?' he asks instead.

'Clinic error,' Ishaq says.  He's protecting Quatre, then.

'Is that true?' Toru asks bluntly.

'They had a bad batch.'

'Are you okay?' Toru fires off sharply.  'What were the symptoms?  Did they admit you to hospital?'

'They caught it before it was dispensed,' Quatre says.  'But it will be a few days before the new shipment comes in.  It's the holidays.  The lab is closed, the delivery service is closed, BPost is closed.'

'Why didn't they have a backup supply laid in?'

'Are you angry at me?  It's not like I broke in and smashed it, Toru.'

Toru leaps on that.  'But someone did?'

Quatre belts his gown.  'I have no way of knowing that.'

'Did you ask Anders--'

'Toru, it's a bureaucratic accident.  No-one's trying to attack us.'

'You,' Toru says brutally.  'And you just said you don't have any way of knowing that.  Unless that's what you were doing in the tanks?'

A knock interrupts them before Toru gets his answer, or whatever bull Quatre is planning on telling him.  It's Cass Ricciardi, and by the look of things he knows he walked in on an argument.  His face goes closed and his eyes narrow, but then he shrugs.

'Craft,' he says, welcoming enough.  'Merry Christmas.  Hey, beautiful.  Done with your spa treatment?'

Quatre's eyes leave Toru's face to shift into an irritable roll.  'I have explained what the tanks are for.  You're the one who argued the Director into building them for us.'

Ricciardi grins.  'You're grumpy,' he says, an edge of triumph there.  To Toru's confusion, he adds slyly, 'A little too much wine.  I told him to stop at two glasses.  It's a terrible burden, being so wise.  So all-knowing.  It's almost like a gift...'

Toru shakes his numb hands, flexing them til he can feel his fingers again.  'We should get him moved back to the barracks,' he tells Ricciardi.  'There's too many people here.'

'Not at the moment.'  Ishaq shrugs diffidently.  'Cass arranged a field trip of sorts.'

'The pond across base froze over finally,' Ricciardi says.  'I rented skates.  And we did move him.  It's taken care of, Craft.  Believe it or not, the rest of us can follow a thought from one end to the other.'

There's a weird pause then, as if they're all taking a breath between deciding on a full-blown fight or figuring out a way to laugh it off.  But maybe no-one really does make a decision, so they stand there in silence ticking away the seconds.  Toru watches Quatre swallow, Ishaq bite his lip.

'Thank you,' Quatre says abruptly, and Ricciardi sighs, turning away.  'I appreciate it, Toru.  Truly.'

'Yeah.'  Toru stabs his feet into his shoes.  'Um, there's presents.  From me and Aunt Relena.  For Christmas.  Happy Christmas.'

'Happy Christmas,' Quatre says, quietly, and Toru nods uncomfortably and leaves without waiting for more than that.  He's not quite far enough down the corridor, and the corridor isn't quite soundproof enough to block it anyway, so he hears Ricciardi say, 'I guess Craft's grumpy, too.'

His bedroom is bright, too bright, after the tanks.  Toru yanks his curtains shut and flops backward on his bed.  It smells a little musty, shut-in.  His sheets are fresh, and his laundry bag is propped on his chair, but it's not til he rolls and bumps his nose on cardboard that he realises there's something else waiting for his return.  It's a flat-rate mailing box, the kind you can purchase at any posty, but it's unsealed, and not just because it's been checked over by Preventers.  This wasn't ever mailed.  There's no address, no writing on it at all.  The glue strip isn't even disturbed.

Toru sits up, cautiously overturning the box, checking every side of it.  He gives it a little shake, and finally tips it over onto his duvet.

How odd.  Not that he has any expectations for it or anything, but he wouldn't have predicted this.  It's a piece of metal.  Just a weird-shaped piece of metal.  Toru picks it up, and frowns down at it, wondering.  Maybe it's not actually metal-- it's got almost a ceramic sort of feel, especially on an edge that looks broken, like it was a part of something bigger once.  It's also shaped, sort of concave, and there's an etched line across the outer curve.  There's no way from looking at it to tell where it came from, what it was part of, or who would have sent it.  Toru deconstructs the box, checking over the inside, but there's nothing there either.  He lays back on his limp pillow, turning the shard over in his fingers to catch the light.

'Happy Christmas,' he mutters, and sets it on his shelf beside his seashells.  It'll blend in at a casual glance, in case anyone comes looking.  It's his mystery, for now, but it'll wait til after he's had a nap.  Toru resolutely closes his eyes.


	2. One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The agent gives Quatre the side-eye. He's not the only Preventer who acts like he thinks Quatre's crazy. Worse, without the serum, Quatre can read it off him. At least the serum works immediately. In five minutes, Quatre will be fine, this will all be over, and they can go home._

Toru insists on accompanying Quatre to HQ, when the new shipment of the serum arrives at last. His motivation is part irritation-- they know what it'll do to Quatre, dragging him into a building with hundreds of people when he has no defences-- and part of it is sheer pigheadedness, because Quatre asks him not to, and Toru prefers to ignore the political and practical reasons that would favour acquiescence.

So they ride together in the squashed front seat of a plastic-sided Twizy, jostling over all the speed humps in the road and shivering in the winter cold. Quatre is pale-faced, unhealthy looking, his lips bitten and bloodless. Toru has a hand on his, projecting calm, shielding his friend as much as he can from the assault of unchecked minds all around them. It's been a long time since they've had to do this, and they're out of practise. Quatre keeps flinching at random intervals.

It gets worse when they arrive. Their driver is apparently their full-time escort, and walks in from the lot with them. Toru, still feeling stubborn, entertains himself dropping behind the agent and into his blind spot. He drags Quatre with him, since they're still hand-clasped, and the fourth time he does it, the agent swings around, scowling at him, and mutters something that sounds an awful lot like 'queers'.

'Screw you,' Toru barks.

'Toru.' Quatre grinds their progress to a halt by stopping dead. 'What is going on?'

'We need to keep moving,' says the agent.

'You need to get about ten feet in front of me and never speak directly to me again,' Quatre tells him coolly. 'And while you're at it, ring your mother.'

The agent gives a startled, guilty twitch. He slinks off without retaliating. Quatre has that affect on people, sometimes. Toru smirks.

'Now what is going on?' Quatre presses him. 'You've been on edge since you got back from Sanq.'

'Nothing's wrong.'

'I'm sorry, that was disingenuous. You're broadcasting and I already know the answer.'

Toru scowls.  'That's a really irritating habit that I haven't missed at all.'

Quatre looks unexpectedly stricken by that.  He lets go of Toru's hand.  'Well, good job it's only a few more minutes, then.'  He turns away before Toru can figure out what he's done wrong and correct it; he collects the agent with a dismissive flick of a finger and loads into the lift without a word.  Toru, hurrying to catch up, only slips in through the closing doors with an inch to spare, and Quatre turns his face to the mirrored wall.  Toru can see sweat on his temples, his pulse beating in his throat.  It may have been years, but he remembers the signs of Quatre fighting his Newtype ability.

'Feedback loop,' he says suddenly, and Quatre's lashes shiver.  'God, we should have brought your iPod.'

'What do you mean, feedback loop?' the agent interrupts.

Toru ignores him and speaks to Quatre mentally.  It's been years since they've been able to do this, too; without his ability to read thoughts, Quatre can only understand him in vague bursts of emotion.  Judging by the rhythmic way Quatre blinks, though, Toru is coming across totally clear.  _I'm sorry.  I should have thought this would happen.  You're picking up on my mood.  And I'm sorry my mood is shitty._

'Language,' Quatre says aloud, confirming that much, at least.

_Sorry._

'I'll be fine.  It's all right.'  Quatre gives him one of those braced smiles.  That's an irritatingly familiar habit, too.  'It'll be fine once I'm back on the jabs.'

The agent gives Quatre the side-eye.  He's not the only Preventer who acts like he thinks Quatre's crazy.  Worse, without the serum, Quatre can read it off him.  Toru kicks at the panel by his feet.  At least the serum works immediately.  In five minutes, Quatre will be fine, this will all be over, and they can go home.

Five minutes later, Toru is stalking about the perimetre of the large Top Secret conference room while their escort eyes him warily.  Quatre is slumped in a chair, biting his thumbnail or maybe trying not to hwark.  He's white as a sheet, and Toru knows well enough that this conference buts against an office suite on the right, and there's probably two dozen personnel all within Quatre's range.  There is no reason they couldn't have been better isolated, no reason to keep them waiting, and he's rehearsing the tirade he's going to launch as soon as they send whichever slow asshole--

'Language,' Quatre says again, his voice a husk of itself.

Toru drops into a crouch in front of him.  'Let me help.'

'It's just another minute.'

'Why suffer?'  He takes both of Quatre's hands, and as soon as he starts projecting, Quatre goes limp with relief.  'Just relax,' Toru soothes him.  'Close your eyes.  Imagine them as stones.  Let the stones sink into you.  You're a pool.  A ripple on the surface of the pool as they sink, and then there's nothing but cool and calm.'

'Quatre, sorry for the--'  The door swings wide.  'Oh, Toru,' Sally Po says, blinking at him.  'Sorry, for the wait.  You know how it is, there's a dozen things waiting to fill every free moment.'

'Director.'  Toru tries to divide his attention, not something he's ever been particularly good at.  The frown lines reappear on Quatre's forehead, but he's meditating.  Toru gives him a hard burst of peace and turns his head toward Sally.  'What's the hold-up?' he asks bluntly.

'We need to talk to him first.'  There are people hovering at the door, waiting for a sign.  Toru recognises the Deputy Director and the General Counsel.  And Agent Dawes, the head of the Newtype Liaison Unit.  And someone in a lab coat, who is not rushing in with the serum the way Toru would hope to see.  Sally says, 'Mr Winner?  I'm sorry to prolong what I know is severe discomfort for you, but there are reasons.  Do you think you're able to join us for--'  She glances over her shoulder for confirmation with the others.  'I think we can keep this at twenty minutes.  Half an hour tops.'

 _You don't have to,_ Toru thinks at Quatre.  _Seriously.  Don't let them push you into it._

'If there's reasons,' Quatre says hollowly.  'Toru, I'm sorry to impose--'

'Don't be stupid.'

'Mr Peacecraft isn't cleared,' says one of the people behind Sally, and Toru gives him the scathing look he reserves for people too stupid to live.  Fortunately, Dawes spares him the explanation.

'Clear him, then,' Dawes says, and squeezes past the crowd to come in.  He stops a respectful but not especially useful ten feet away.  'Mr Winner,' he says, more formally than he usually would, given their audience, 'I've got a chair waiting outside for you.  We'd like to move you to a more comfortable location.'

Quatre gives him a bare nod.  Toru helps him to his feet, steadies him for the walk, and everyone clears out of his way, at least, so that Toru can get him into the wheelchair that's parked right outside the conference room.  Quatre gags as they pass by the crowd, and Toru gets his shoes out of the way as he forces another wave of peace into Quatre.  Quatre goes down into the chair only vaguely conscious, and Toru lets Dawes drive them so he can keep hold of Quatre's right arm, radiating as much well-being as he can muster.

The room Dawes takes them to looks like a records closet only recently vacated of its boxes.  Someone's brought in a folding table and two chairs, but Dawes just pushes Quatre to the table, pours him a glass of water from the bottle awaiting them, and taps a telephone conference pod to life.  'We're connected,' he tells the pod, and leaves with a small smile for Toru.

Toru sits slowly.  _Quatre?_ he asks silently.  _You can do this._

 _'Quatre?'_   It's Sally's voice, echoing his through the pod.

Quatre nods.  'Here,' he says.  'Thank you for-- for the move.  This is better.'  He takes the water in a shaking hand.  Toru holds him steady as he drinks.

 _'To the point,'_ Sally says briskly.  _'Quatre, I apologise personally for the delay in getting you the serum.  As we discussed when we spoke about it two weeks ago, there was a production issue in the facility where it's manufactured.  It's likely that the last batch you had was tainted, which accounts for the symptoms you reported.'_

Toru casts a dark look at Quatre.  He slaps the 'mute' button on the pod.  'You didn't tell me you were having issues!'

'You were with your aunt in Sanq.  It was a minor thing and nothing to disturb you with.'  Quatre gestures for the pod.  'Put me back on.  I gathered as much,' he tells the group on the other end of the line.  'I take it there's a continuing problem, or you'd have more by now?'

 _'We do have more now,'_ Sally tells them.  _'And it's available for you if decide you'd like to use it.  But the reason for this conference is to request that you not decide that.'_

'Why?' Toru interjects.  'You know he needs it to be around the other Newtypes.'

 _'Yes, I do know that, Mr Peacecraft,'_ Sally says with just a hint of censure.  _'I also know that the serum disrupts your ability to interact with your fellow Newtypes on an equal basis.'_

That was a unique way of putting it.  Toru angles a glance up at Quatre's face.  Calm, he thinks, and Quatre inhales deeply.

'Yes,' he replies.  'That's an accurate description.'

_'But without the serum, your abilities are above par, as measured amongst the Newtypes?'_

'Above--'  Quatre's hand spasms in Toru's.  'I don't know.  We haven't measured it, not really.'

_'Exactly, Mr Winner.  That's exactly our point.  We'd like to do that.  And this is an opportune time.'_

Toru hits 'mute' again.  'Don't.'

'Don't what?'

'Don't even consider it, Quatre.  You don't owe them a hearing.'

Quatre waves at the pod, and Toru crosses his arms.  With a sigh, Quatre leans up to unmute them.  'I'd like context for this request,' he says, which is not a no, not a go-to-hell, and not even a-- 'Please,' Quatre adds, and Toru gives up in disgust.

Sally's deputy, Tatiana Oudekirk, pipes up in her bright voice.  Her nickname is The Milkmaid, and Toru, already scowling, is glad they're not on video.  Quatre likes her, and Sally's been using Oudekirk to simper her way past Quatre's natural suspicions for almost a year.  _'Quatre, this is Tat.  We've been under some pressure from the Legislature.  You're aware that the Defence Committee recently turned over?  There's a new Chair and seven new members.'_

'You know we have a television in Newtype Central,' Toru interjects.  'And newspapers.'

'Toru.'

Toru scowls at Quatre.

'Pressure from Parliament,' Quatre recaps, dropping his eyes.  'Is the operating budget under threat?'

There's a momentary pause.  Sally says, _'No, and as you may be aware the line items devoted to the Newtype Project are miniscule, compared to, say, the operating budget for Colonial Surveillance.  I don't think there's necessarily any move to deprive us of the seven hundred thousand annual.'_

'Then what means, precisely, are they using to pressure you?'

 _'There's talk of an official Inquiry.'_   That's the Milkmaid again, sober and soft.  _'An Inquiry would involve testimony, records, likely an internal investigation, the Inspector General.  Now look, if that's what we're facing, we're open to that, confident in our ability to respond.  You know what accountability measures we've taken, from the very beginning.  But you also know that Inquiries have a way of turning into witch hunts.  We think this is an attempt to gain some political traction on the Newtype issue.'_

'We're not dangerous,' Toru says, bewildered by that.  'We're cooperating.  We're beyond cooperating, we're--'

 _'We know,'_ Sally says.  _'And come to it they know.  But that doesn't mean the public would believe it.'_

'Look, I'm sorry,' Toru interrupts.  'But I don't even believe the public's aware of us.  Not really.  That's all part of the war, it was a long time ago.  A really long time ago.'

 _'The Haddad Rebellion is a more recent memory,'_ Sally says.  _'And Ivan Rhzevsky's murder spree--'_

'That didn't make the papers, and anyway he was only killing Newtypes, not other people.'

 _'If I could finish,'_ Sally says, deceptively mild.  _'There's been a number of Freedom of Information requests directed at records about Newtypes in the last year.  We've released with an eye toward transparency, per the last Executive Directive instructing agencies to err on the side of openness.  We have reason to believe this is going to culminate in a book and several excerpts to be published in, amongst other sources, Der Spiegel and the Colonial Indepedent.'_

'Who's the author?' Quatre asks.

_'He usually focusses on government waste and abuse.  We have some background, nothing much.  Originally a sports writer.  We're not sure entirely what triggered his interest in this, but he seems to be interested in the extent to which the government have supported and enabled the Newtypes.'_

'Experiments and data have been a part of the Newtype Programme from the beginning.  I'm afraid I still don't follow, precisely, what you intend to do differently, and why that would help.'

 _'Bluntly, we could learn a lot more with you than we can without you.  It's not that the others aren't cooperating, you're correct in that, Toru, but we have to rely on their articulation of what they're doing.  A lot of it can't be scientifically observed, or, well, at least we haven't figured out how to do that.  You're the only one with the ability to observe and determine what works, why it's working.'_   The Milkmaid goes to her most coaxing mode, the one she reserves for when Quatre's raising perfectly logical objections and saying 'no' to Preventers would benefit him a lot more than not.  _'But you can only access that ability when you're not suppressing it.  Obviously we're not talking forever, but for some time, at least.  And since you've already had a few weeks without the serum, we can be sure it's not in your system, and start right away.'_

'Start what?' Toru asks.  'I mean what exactly.'

 _'We've got twenty-odd items on a list.'_   That's Dawes.  _'Anders helped.'_

Anders.  Toru could have guessed.  Anders is always sucking up to Preventers; he and Sinikka even went out on missions, at least until Sinikka had a melt-down in sim training, a temper tantrum that attracted a lightning storm and knocked out the power for two hours.  That's why Preventers started confining them to base, and if it just makes everyone stir-crazy, well.  That's why Preventers mandates psychiatry for them, too.

'We'd like your feedback and contributions,' the Milkmaid tells them.  Or tells Quatre, since Toru slaps the mute button hard enough to knock the teleconference pod clear off the table, and then he stalks out of the room, leaving Quatre staring after him, having read the imminent explosion off him.

And, indeed, follows him out too quickly not to have been planning it.  Quatre is with him before he's past the door.  A group of agents in olive-green Preventers jackets veers around them, chatty and absorbed in themselves.  Quatre winces, a hand at his temple.  Toru grabs him by the elbow and steers him around the corner.  The men's is just there, he remembers, and sure enough he plows them through the door and gets Quatre bent over the sink in time to catch the involuntary gore reflex.  Toru breathes through his nose, looking carefully away, and busies himself wetting paper towels to daub at the back of Quatre's neck.

'You can't do this, you know,' Toru says, as Quatre braces himself for ragged breaths.  'I mean physically.  You can't do this.'

'It's only this bad because--'  Quatre inhales sharply and holds it.  Toru presses another wet paper into his hand.  'Because it's been so long since I-- since I had to deal with it.'

'Two years ago you would have been out the door before they could even hint at hooking you up to machines and jabbing you with needles.'

'It is a feedback cycle.'

'What?'

'It is a feedback loop.'  Quatre mops at his face, runs water into his hand and spits it out again.  'But it's not you to me.  I think it's me to you.'

Toru leans on the stall door.  'I don't know how it could... how it could be.'

'You're leaps and bounds above where I was at your age.  I was crippled by this.'

'Quatre, none of that--'

'Do you even hear yourself?  You're impatient, temperamental, demanding.  Intolerant of the littlest provocation.  That's not like you.  It's like me.'

'That's not exactly how I'd describe you,' Toru protests, surprised by that.

'No, I think the exact words were "cranky wanker".'

Toru flushes.  Quatre had not been meant to overhear that one.  'Sometimes,' he hedges.  'Definitely not all the time.  Just-- lately.'

'Because I hate it here,' Quatre says, so softly Toru can almost pretend he didn't, if he thought it would help.  He's not sure.  Not sure enough that he almost lets it slip away, like the time just after Halloween he found Quatre weeping in the tanks, then pretending the next morning his red eyes were a winter cold symptom.  The time at the end of August when he'd found Quatre, at dawn, standing amongst the decommissioned helos on the airfield, staring off into the rising sun with an inscrutable expression.  The way Ishaq's taken to following Quatre around, as if he thinks Quatre will vanish unwatched.  The other Newtypes know something's happening, too.  Quatre can't be attuned to them, but they're all attuned to him, helpless and swept along.

In the end, all Toru can say is, 'I know.'

Quatre splashes his face.  'They'll have realised we've left.  Are you done flouncing out in a snit?'

Quatre is a cranky wanker.  'You didn't explain about the feedback loop.'

A knock at the door announces Dawes just a moment before he pokes in his head.  'You lads alive?'

'He was feeling unwell,' Toru says.  'Sorry.  We made a dash for it.'

'No problem.'  Dawes grins at him.  'The Milkmaid went on for a solid fiver though, fore we figured it out.'

'Oh, be nice to Tatiana,' Quatre quells them wearily.  'She's doing her job.'

'You're the one who ran away,' Toru points out.  He takes Quatre's hand, and concentrates on relief and comfort.  Quatre's shoulders slump.  'I'm ringing for Cass.'

'I did,' Dawes says.  'Sorry.  Figured you might want him near.'

'I don't need Cass to come mind me,' Quatre says, cross until Toru, merciless, squashes it with a wave of tranquility.  'Toru,' Quatre mutters, rolling his head on his neck, his face drooping into sleepy folds.  His grip on Toru's hand goes slack.

'He agrees,' Toru tells Dawes.  'That'll thrill everyone.'

'Oh.  Yes.  Will do.'

'This list of tests.  What are they going to do to him?  How did they even-- how'd they even come up with tests?'

'Anders, like I said.  Hear him tell it, it's all standard stuff from the Newtype Programme.'

'The Alliance Newtypes?' Toru says sharply.  'Jesus, Dawes, you know how appalling that really is, you've heard the stories.'

Dawes puts up his hands.  'It looks normal enough to me.  I mean, normal for this stuff.  No-one's trying to hurt him, Toru.'

'I believe that less and less the longer this goes on.'  He puts an arm about Quatre.  'Let's get this over with,' he says, and leads them out to the lion's den.

 

 

**

 

 

'She's flirting with you.'

Toru glances over his shoulder.  The medical student with the sloppy ponytail of pink-tinted hair is looking at him.  She smiles.

'Um,' Toru says, and faces Quatre in the gurney again.  'She probably wouldn't appreciate you reading that off her.'

'No, she'd be much happier if you could.  She's got some well-developed ideas what to do with you.  To you.'

Toru's face is flaming hot.  'Nice to know I've still got it.  Whatever it, you know, um.  Is.'

'Well said.'

Sally returns from speaking with the doctors, laying her hand on Quatre's crooked knee.  'Okay, here's the rundown.  We've isolated this ward sixty feet in all directions, including the floors above and below.  Visitors whenever you like, whoever you like, just let Doctor Mahtan know.  I know it's not going to be incredibly comfortable here overnight, so if you have trouble sleeping, we can arrange things back in Newtype Central.'

'Not there,' Toru protests.  'If he's not taking the serum--'

'Sorry, slip of the tongue.  You've been staying in Barrack Nine?  We'll keep it empty as long as we can.  We'll relocate you whenever it's needed.'

'How long do you expect this to run?' Toru asks.

'We're going to aim for eleven days consecutive.  If we need breaks, it'll go a little longer, obviously.'

The medical student is back, bringing a quilt of bland beige for Quatre's bed.  She brushes against Toru on her way by.  'We'll be here round the clock,' she promises brightly.  'I've got evenings.  You ever watch _Cooking With The Stars_?  Oh my god, Hutton Paige, right?'

Quatre's face undergoes an interesting gyration or two.  Toru throws himself into the breach.  'We haven't met,' he says, stretching a hand to her.

'Franka.'  She presses his hand firmly, meeting his eyes.  She's a lot shorter than him, the top of her head barely meeting his collarbone, but the way she holds herself suggests balance and grace.  If she's a med student here, she'd have to qualify for field agent, which at this point means she can probably outrun Toru and wrestle him to the mat when she catches him.  Toru sucks in his gut.

Sally is still talking to Quatre.  'Tonight we're just going to monitor you, get a baseline.  We'll start in the morning.  I'll be here for the initial test, if I can make it in, but Tatiana will definitely be here.  This is a priority for us.'

Ricciardi returns from down the hall, trailing his old partner Dawes.  Dawes nods to Toru and takes up a stance along the wall.  Ricciardi butts Toru out of the way and bends to give Quatre a peck on the lips.  'Hey,' he says.  'So, have we got to the part where I quit in protest over your poor treatment?'

Sally gives Ricciardi a flat look that refuses to be amused.  Ricciardi ignores it, which is pretty brave, or pretty stupid.  It's hard to tell with him.

Franka tugs at Toru's sleeve, and guides him to the corner.  'Listen, we've got all these empty rooms.  I know you'll want to stay close.  I have a bed for you next door, and this is the key.'  She hands him a plastic card.  'And you don't have to ask Doctor Mahtan, because he doesn't know and what he doesn't know won't hurt him.'

Or, by extension, Director Po.  Toru overturns the card, and notices something in pen.  A number sequence.  'What's this?'

'My phone.'

'You know that I'm-- like, I don't want to blow this--'  Toru hears himself stumbling and hauls it back.  'You know I'm a Newtype?'

'Well, I'm a Picses.'  Franka grins.  'Somehow I think we have a chance.  Anyway, the canteen closes at eight, so here's a menu, and you use this extension to put in an order, and I recommend ordering snacks as well.  The kettle corn is good.  No caffeine for Mr Winner, that would interfere with the tests.  Now, over here, this is his migraine prescription, this is for any nausea, this is a mild sleep aid-- only one of those, if he wants it-- and this is the buzzer for the front desk if you need anything else.'

'You are literally the most helpful Preventer I've ever met,' Toru says, impressed.

'I have a feeling that's a low bar.'

Lately.  Maybe some of that shows on his face.  Franka smiles at him, and Toru feels his neck heating up again.

'Toru.'  It's Quatre.  Toru scoots awkwardly around Franka and back to Quatre's gurney.  Quatre looks a little disgruntled, which may have something to do with the fact that Ricciardi obviously went through his underpants drawer in the process of fetching his pyjamas.  It's the blue set that Toru is not supposed to know Quatre has, used exclusively for sexy-times with his boyfriend.

I should maybe get some distance, Toru thinks, and Quatre looks up at him and turns a jewel-tone pink.

Ricciardi seems to be thinking the same thing.  'If you want to get some rest back home,' he suggests.  'I figured I'd park it here with Quat.'

'He is meant to be sleeping,' Franka says slyly, and Quatre's face goes redder.

Sally clears her throat.  'Agreed.  Nothing funny on the monitors, Agent.'

That's a more pointed reprimand.  Ricciardi's been on the Director's shit list for precisely the amount of time he's been sharing a bed with Quatre Winner.  She can't order him not to, but there's a reason Ricciardi hasn't been promoted, that Dawes is lead agent on the Newtype Project even though the Newtypes trust Ricciardi more, a man who makes an effort to know them, a man who loves one of them enough to take their side, not Preventers.

Toru knows a lot about how that works around here.

'We'll see you in the morning,' Sally says finally, and she and Dawes move for the door.  'Really.  Rest.  This will be over before you know it.'

'I'll be at the front desk,' Franka tells them.  'I'll check on you after dinner.'

'And, uh, I'll be out.'  Toru gestures vaguely, but directs his thoughts to Quatre.  _There's a room here.  I'm nearby if you need me._

'Thank you,' Quatre says.  'You heard them.  Less than two weeks.'

Toru ducks out into the hall.  It is pretty empty, as promised.  It's not a budget issue that's going to drag them down in any kind of inquiry, it will be things like this.  Accommodations so far beyond the norm.  Turning over whole buildings to one man's questionable medical experiments, subjecting him to who knows what in the name of progress.  No, not progress.  No-one is pretending this is progress.  That'll be the real dance, whatever lies they tell if there is an investigation about just what the purpose of continuing Newtype experiments is.  Could possibly be, besides the only reason Newtypes have ever existed.  To be weapons.

Toru moves to stick the keycard in his pocket, and discovers Quatre's migraine pills.  Well, not that it matters, since they put a new prescription in his private room, but if he holds onto them he might forget them.  He turns back, depressing the latch on Quatre's door and pushing it open, before remembering Quatre and Ricciardi are in there and might be doing something private.  He lets it swing almost closed and raises a hand to knock.

He hears his name, though, and the part of him that used to be attuned to gathering intelligence pauses, holds its breath, and listens in.

'I thought you were going to talk to Toru,' Ricciardi is saying.

Quatre answers wearily.  'I'm struggling.  There's no good way to say it.'

'You don't think it'll be harder if you wait on it?'

'Don't badger me, Cass.  I'm too tired.'

It occurs to Toru then, approximately, that of course Quatre knows he's standing there.  With his ability active again he can read anyone in range, and his connection with Toru was always stronger.  He backs away from the door, letting it fall silently closed, and retreats beyond earshot to the far wall.  He splays his hands flat behind him, pinned between his bodyweight and the cool plaster.  Secrets.  No, he's not surprised.  Only that it's something Ricciardi knows, maybe.  It's not really like Quatre to share.  Spending the majority of your adult life in genteel captivity doesn't really inspire it.

Toru supposes he knows a bit what that's like.  Two years is nothing to the twenty Quatre's racked up, but looking around a Preventers medical unit makes the next eleven days a foreboding omen.  Nothing good has ever happened to a Newtype in a place like this.  It's not hateful, exactly, what they're doing, but Toru looks up and down white corridors with no clear exits and thinks, I hate it here too.

His hands are numb.  Toru curls them into fists in the small of his back.  Can't unthink that.  Can't un-admit it.  Can't do anything about it.

He leaves to find the canteen, and order himself something for dinner.


	3. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I don't like it when you act reasonable,_ Toru thinks at him. _It makes me think you're trying to trick me._

'Anything?'

'It's a very nice field,' Quatre says.

The Milkmaid smiles patiently. 'Can you sense anything?'

Toru watches Quatre make a slow three-sixty turn, and come up with unmentionable gunk on his shoe. Quatre grimaces and wipes it on the grass. 'I don't think there's any people for miles, much less in range. Unless you want me to read the cattle?'

'Can you?' she asks curiously.

The look Quatre tosses in Toru's direction speaks volumes more than even the most expressive eyeroll could have. Toru shrugs back at him. _Can you?_ he asks silently.

Quatre gives it a try. A long-suffering sort of try, with grim lines of impatience imprinted like parentheses to either side of his mouth. A moment later, a frown pinches his brows together, as if he's about to sneeze. He doesn't, but his eyelashes flutter repeatedly. 'Well, that's new,' he comments at last.

'Oh?' Tatiana fingers her Deputy Director badge. 'What do cows think about?' Her grin is the wrong side of flirtatious, but Quatre's face relaxes, and he smiles back at her. Toru glowers.f

'Their stomachs,' Quatre says. 'However many stomachs cows do have.'

Anders clears his throat.  'Sorry, did we really come out here to experiment on cows?'

'Missing something at home?' Toru mutters.

Anders puts a dark little glare in Toru's direction.  'I have case review with Whitby.'

'Agent Whitby.'

'Obviously an agent.'

'No-- he's the agent.  It's his case, not your case.'

'Anders,' Quatre calls softly, interrupting them before the Newtype can more than flush.  'I appreciate your presence here.  Let's finish as quickly as we can.  Get you back in goodly time.'

'Daddy to the rescue,' Anders hisses at Toru, but he goes obediently enough.  Tatiana is giving instructions, and soon enough Anders is pacing out across the field, striding off into the sunlight a hundred steps.  He whirls back to face them with his hands on his hips.

'Quatre,' Tatiana says.  'Can you read him?'

'I can,' Quatre confirms.  'Just.'

Tatiana lifts her phone and taps it to speaker.  'Go another fifteen, Anders, okay.'

They've done this now with every Newtype on base, testing various conditions, double blind testing.  What it means to have it confirmed that the Flash can be felt through walls Toru can't guess, since they already knew it; springing it as a surprise doesn't mean much either, besides providing mixed results.  Quatre can sense some Newtypes faster than others, some farther away, and, without the serum to interfere with the ability, he can read all of them with varying levels of accuracy.  Anders is the last to be tested, having successfully put it off by pleading other tasks all week.  Toru records the results of his stopwatch in the database as Tatiana arranges Quatre and Anders like chess pieces.  It's about twenty minutes of confirmation followed by adjustment followed by confirmation, til at last they've established Quatre's range with Anders down to the inch.  A ragged little terrier wanders through, disrupting things momentarily, but there doesn't seem to be a reason to chase it off once Quatre realises why he thought Anders had a sudden hankering for treats.  By the time they're wrapping up, Quatre's acquired an armful of dog, and absently scratches its ears as Anders comes walking in.

'Phase Two?' Tatiana asks then.

Toru looks up sharpish from the e-reader.  Quatre looks healthy enough.  There's warm sun to offset the cold wind, and Toru brought sandwiches and thermoses of hot tea, so they can have a bit of a picnic and rest after.  He can't honestly say these aren't perfect conditions, if Quatre is going to insist on going along with all of this.

'I am,' Quatre replies to his unspoken censure.  The dog snuffles around Quatre's beard, whining softly.  'Although I'm absolutely gagging for tea.'

'No caffeine,' Toru reminds him.  Quatre makes a face, and Toru shrugs.  'You're the one who agreed.'

'Right-o.'  Tatiana gets the video on her phone running.  'Anders, let's go back to one hundred paces.  We want standard measurement.  Quatre, here, give me the little doggie.  Yellow flag for when you feel it coming on, red for when you need to stop.  Clear?'

'Clear.'

Toru steps back, well out of the way.  This is the part that gets weird.  In the two years since the remaining Newtypes united in Preventers, they've had more than enough time to figure out how this sort of thing works.  Every Newtype ability is different, and there's probably a finite well of variations, but it is possible to explore the nuances.  What one Newtype can do, another Newtype can learn, at least to some extent.  Quatre's the one who first figured that out, and he's the only one who hasn't experimented since.  The serum makes him a Normal, or nearly.  But this will be twofold in a way they've never attempted before: Quatre using his own ability, and using that ability to verify the ability of another Newtype, simultaneously.

On the whole, Toru is finding the process about as stressful as falling down a mountain and getting swept over by an avalanche at the landing.  Quatre screamed for an entire hour, when they did this with Iva.

Anders is using the mantra meditation technique Toru taught everyone.  He's too far away for Toru to catch more than the vague sound of his chant, but Toru is watching Quatre, anyway.  Quatre isn't meditating so much as standing still and gathering himself, the way Toru has seen him do too many times to count.  The dog sits on its hindquarters a few feet away, its shaggy head cocked as if it finds this interesting, too.  Quatre's hands hang loose at his sides, mittened fingers twitching every few seconds.  Behind his big sunglasses, it's impossible to tell if his eyes are opened or closed, or even where he's focussing, but the wind catches the fringe in his scarf and makes it dance.  Toru thinks, just for a second, that the wind tastes like ozone, but it's too fleeting to be sure, and then it hits.

Anders makes a big showy throwing motion with his hands, like he's trying to whip a football with all his might.  A moment later, Quatre rocks on his heels, his hands spreading wide in a spasm; the yellow card goes up.  Otherwise he's still, and Tatiana, frowning, keeps filming with her phone, waiting it out.  A minute in, the dog barks, and runs off.

Red flag.  Anders lowers his hands, and Quatre slumps.  Toru clicks 'stop' on his watch, and records the time.  Three minutes.  'You okay?' he calls to Quatre.  'You need to rest?'

'I'm all right.'

'Move back fifteen paces,' Tatiana instructs Anders, who walks it and about-faces again.  Quatre nods, and Anders lifts his hands.  Toru grimaces.  It's silly, since Anders isn't doing anything physical at all-- his ability manipulates memories.  If anything, he's pulling, extracting, not flinging.  Quatre puts up the yellow flag nearly ten seconds later than last time.  He waves the red faster, though, and when Anders lets up Quatre bends over his knees, flushed and sweating.  His hand is shaking, clenched on the red card.

'Give him a break,' Toru tells the Deputy Director.  'Water and a rest.'

'Quatre?' Tatiana asks.  'Sit down, sweetie.'

'I'm all right.'

'Five minutes,' Toru orders, bringing the decaffeinated tea and the blanket to wrap about Quatre's shoulders.  'You've promised a lot of people not to overdo it.  Just sit down.  Anders,' he raises his voice.  'You want?'  He waggles another thermos.

'Thanks.'  Anders comes crouching near, a polite distance away.  He watches Quatre with just the slightest sign of anxiety, his cheeks sucked in like he's biting them inside.  'It works better the worse your memories are,' he offers, unnecessarily, since everyone there already knows, but Quatre nods, and Anders gulps at his tea with a guilty blush.

'I'm all right,' Quatre says, three words that induce teeth-grinding in Toru.  They might as well be Quatre's mantra, they leave his mouth so often.

'You are such a liar,' he mutters, and fiddles with the font size of his database for lack of anything more constructive to do.

'Don't sass your elders,' Quatre replies, and flashes him a weary grin.

'A hundred thirty paces,' Tatiana instructs them next, and they take a few minutes to set up again.  Quatre removes his dark glasses long enough to squint up at the bright grey of the winter sky, stretching uninterrupted over the farmland without so much as a whisp of cloud in sight.  Anders waves when he's in place, and begins his chant.  Quatre positions himself, braced on locked knees.  Tatiana calls go, and Anders raises his hands, hurling another imaginary ball through the chilly air.

Quatre shivers all over.  Yellow card, totally unnecessary; Toru clocks the flinch, not the signal.  Quatre's twitchier, this time, dropping his head to his chest, then turning slightly away from all of them.  He almost raises the red card, but doesn't.  One minute.  He presses his hand to his side, as if it hurts-- the memory of some long-ago hurt.  Two minutes.  Two minutes ten seconds, as he lets out a groan through clenched teeth.  Two minutes fifteen, twenty, twenty-five--

Red card.  Anders lets it go immediately, and Quatre staggers to a knee, this time.  Toru runs for him, getting there just a moment before the Deputy Director, and together they support Quatre as he heaves deep gasps and sags dizzily.

'What memory?' Toru asks, when Quatre's recovered enough to hold the thermos for himself.

'Libra,' Quatre says hoarsely.  'I was stabbed.  I remember-- evidently I remember the sword scraping my spine.'

'We should stop,' Anders offers, looking a little green.  'The others aren't this sensitive to it.  Physical sensation should take much longer.'

'I'm--'

'All right,' they all say with Quatre.

'Well, I am.  It's a memory, not anything more.'

'Do you think you could replicate it?' Tatiana asks.  'The ability, I mean.'

'I think I see how you do it.  It's like water in a sieve.  I'm not entirely clear how select the memory to pursue.  The good memories look different?'

'It's not about good or bad, just strong,' Anders says, tugging at the gold hoop in his earlobe.  'The more vivid, the more it works.  The emotion behind it matters.'

'I understand.'  Quatre turns his dark lenses toward Toru.  'I think I could get it with one more try.  Shall we?'

 _I don't like it when you act reasonable,_ Toru thinks at him.  _It makes me think you're trying to trick me._

'You don't like it when I throw temper tantrums and sulk, either,' Quatre points out.  'Reasonable is the order of the day.  I can do reasonable.'  He shoulders off the blanket and climbs to his feet.  'Anders?  You mind?  One more and we'll get you back to base.'

'Yeah.  Sure.'  Anders rises.  'I'll try to slow it down, I guess.  If I can.  Speed is sort of the point.'

'One hundred forty-five paces,' Tatiana says.

One minute fifteen seconds, this time, between the yellow card and the moment Quatre puts his hand to his head.  Ten seconds after that for Quatre to turn his whole body, a strange half-step, half-lurch, facing away from all of them and swaying in the breeze.  Five seconds like that, staring off at something only he can see.  And then Quatre's knees give out and he crumples to the dirt.

Toru is running before he even quite registers it happening.  He feels the brush of something tugging at his mind-- Anders, who drops his mental attack when Toru gets in the line of fire.  Toru grabs Quatre by the shoulders, rolling him onto his back; he's seized tight, every muscle clenched, even spasming, so that fine shivers wrack his body.  Toru tries to make him comfortable, straighten him out, and removes the dark glasses.  Quatre's eyes are slitted open, whites showing beneath fluttering eyelashes.

'Is he all right?' Anders calls, just as Quatre arches his back and coughs out a shock of bright red blood, then falls limp and unconscious.

'Shit,' Toru gasps, shaken by that.  'Someone-- someone get the water--'  He cushions Quatre's head on his thighs and feels for his pulse.  Feeling for his pulse.  Feeling-- he cups a hand under Quatre's nose.  No breath.

Tatiana may not be a mindreader, but the shock on Toru's face is clue enough.  She goes streaking off for the car, popping the boot and diving in for the emergency kit.  Toru tries slapping Quatre, pinching his hand, but he's not rousing, and he can't hear a heartbeat when he presses his ear to Quatre's chest.

'Move,' Anders orders him, falling to his knees at Quatre's side, and begins compressions the moment Toru is out of the way.  He's pushing hard with locked elbows, rapid thrusts with layered fists into Quatre's ribcage, his face frozen in granite concentration.  When he breaks to cover Quatre's nose and mouth and breathe for him, Tatiana is there with the defibrillator, peeling the sticky off the orange pads.  Toru rips at Quatre's cardigan and shirt with numb shaking fingers.  Everything between his ears roars hollow like the ocean, his vision is grey at the edges, time is crawling and racing at once.  The automatic sensors are calling out meaningless numbers in a mechanical voice, Anders pushes at him until he clears his hands from Quatre's body, Quatre arches again.  And then, the most welcome sound he's ever, ever heard, the steady march of beats that indicate a functioning heart, back at normal rhythm.

'Oh, Christ,' Anders says weakly.  'Christ.  Quatre, I'm so sorry.  I'm so sorry.  I'm--'

Quatre's head lolls.  His eyes crinkle at the edges, smooth out again.  When Toru takes his hand, he squeezes.

'Get him the hell home,' Toru rasps.  'Now.'

 

 

**

 

 

There's a queue for Quatre's door when Toru comes up from the canteen with coffee.

Franka the nurse gets Toru in past Iva and Jem, who are entertaining Beatriz as quietly as can be done with an active toddler.  Toru slides around Ishaq sitting in the only chair.  Sally and Tatiana make up the rest of the crowd, not counting Dawes and Ricciardi, who are arguing in the corner by the window.  Quatre is asleep, which accounts for why so many people have felt free to take up residence around him, but even out cold there's a pinched frown on his face.  Toru takes a deep breath, gears himself up for a fight, and clears his throat loudly.

'Not a good idea,' he says, when heads turn toward him.

'Thank you,' Ricciardi responds emphatically, elbowing his partner sharply.  'Maybe you'll listen to the Newtype, huh?'

'Can we clear ninety percent of this?' Toru asks politely but pointedly.

'Not without a decision.'  Sally replaces Quatre's chart at the foot of his bed.  'And we need him awake to make it.  Toru, honest opinion: can he keep going with the experiment?'

'He's laying right there,' Ricciardi interjects.  'We can ask him when he wakes up.  If,' he adds in an acid mutter, in what is probably more an expression of temper than actual worry about lives being endangered.  Sally makes a visible effort to not snap, and the Milkmaid goes sliding in uninvited, to general irritation.

'A cardiac event at forty is obviously not ideal,' Tatiana says, oblivious to the glares.  Or maybe just pretending to be, to keep the peace.  She wouldn't be Deputy if she were as blithe as she seems.  'But I think we can fairly well avoid a repeat of the circumstances.'

'Sure,' Toru agrees.  'When he goes back on the serum.  Seriously, can we clear the room?  The floor would be better.'

'I can put you up in the nurses' lounge,' Franka volunteers, and for that alone Toru resolves to ask her out and treat her to the best he can afford given the fact he has no job and earns no money.  Well, maybe to just bring her flowers.  Franka has a brightly professional smile on her face.  'Maybe a round of tea for everyone?'

'I can help with that,' Ishaq volunteers, and there's no saying no to that combined assault of determinedly solicitous helpfulness.  Somehow everyone gets moving, or gets moved, and when Toru pokes his head into the hallway five minutes later even the rest of the Newtypes have vanished.  Roses, he thinks.  Franka deserves roses.  Ishaq, too.

Ricciardi is the only one who didn't take off, and with no-one left to see he lets his worry show.  He nods gruffly to Toru as he slumps against the wall, gazing at Quatre in the gurney.

'He's getting worse,' he says, then, and Toru can only nod.  He's noticed, too.

'I was, uh,' Toru murmurs.  He picks up the card on the bedside table.  It has a drawing in blue crayon-- Quatre, he thinks, though with Beatriz's artwork it can be hard to tell.  A lopsided head with what he takes to be beard, rendered in teal.  There's scribbles of yellow surrounding the figure.  The glow.  Beatriz is a Newtyke, just like Toru; she can see Newtypes, just like Toru.  Not for the first time, watching her growing up, Toru wonders what his parents noticed of his heritage.  Had he proudly turned in drawings of strange and unseeable events?  Had they worried for him, or even known what it was anything more than an active imagination?

'I was thinking of ringing Barton,' he finishes in a rush, and makes sure Quatre and the big wide gurney are well between him and Ricciardi.

But Ricciardi doesn't take a swing at him.  Doesn't fly into a rage or say something cutting and mocking or undermining, all things possible and probably deserved.  Instead, Ricciardi slumps just a little more, and sullenly mumbles, 'Yeah.  Me, too.'

For some reason, that's the moment Toru realises this is serious.  He swallows back his instinct to fill the silence with words.  There are no words, no words good enough for this.

Sally is drinking tea when Toru makes it to the lounge.  She's obviously waiting for him, and gestures him near with a crooked finger as soon as he puts his head in.  Franka intercepts him with a cuppa, and Toru stutters out a thanks.

'Extra sugar,' she says, giving him a broad wink.

Sally looks bemused when Toru slides awkwardly to her side.  'New girlfriend?' she wonders.

'Um,' Toru says.  'It does kind of look like it's heading that way.'

'I guess you haven't dated anyone since--'  There's no way she can finish that sentence without drawing attention to the fact that Toru hasn't had anything remotely resembling a normal teenage experience.  He's twenty and though he's fairly sure Sally guessed it went farther with Micheko Walker than it was meant to, as far as she can prove Toru is more like a lab rat who's grown into the shape of his cage than a young man with wild oats to sow.

'Yeah,' Toru says.  'So, Quatre-- the answer to that was no.'

'Answer to what?'

'Whether Quatre can keep going.  The answer is no.  I mean, yes, the answer is always yes, but it should be no.  He's different from other Newtypes.  I don't know why, but we're not learning why, doing all this.  He needs a break.'

'A break,' Sally repeats slowly.  'So you think we could resume later?  How much later, a few days?  A week?'  When Toru just looks at her, she flushes ever so slightly.

'He's invoking his contract with Preventers,' Toru says then.  He had the idea after the experiment with Iva, actually, and he hasn't discussed it with Quatre, but it's been sitting in his back pocket, a last measure guaranteeing a pause, if not an end to this.  'He's entitled to outside medical care.  He's getting a second opinion.'

The particular expression on Sally's face, stone frozen and eyes just a little wider in shock, takes him back.  He was six the first time he saw that face.  It greeted him when Sally saw the mess he'd made of the back garden, digging for treasure.  Sometimes he can feel sorry for Sally; he's old enough now to symapthise with getting stuck with a child after a tragedy, especially a child born with something dangerous and unknowable.

'I'm taking him out of here,' Toru says.  'Just so you know.  It's in his contract.  If you could provide a car?  For the airport?'

Sally recovers from her surprise quickly enough.  Her throat moves in a swallow.  She puts her mug on the nearest surface, a trolley with bedpans.  'For Quatre, yes.  Of course.  We take that contract very seriously.  But I can't let you go with him.'

He expected that.  'Oh?' he asks politely.

'You were just off-base with your Aunt for weeks.  We don't want to give an impression that you get favours the others don't.'

'Of course.  Maybe next time some of the others could come with me.'  Toru smiles.

Sally mirrors him exactly.  'So you understand.'

'Absolutely.  It's okay, though.  The car is to pick up the doctor.'

The strain is starting to show.  'I didn't realise you had someone in mind already.'

'Oh, yes,' Toru says.  'She's treated him before, actually.'

'Who?  There may be some issue with credentials.  Getting privileges arranged.'

'Iraia Winner,' Toru says.  Behind his back, he crosses his fingers.  This is the kind of play Quatre makes all the time, and it looks a lot less stressful when Quatre does it.  His heart is pounding.  He'd feel a lot better if he'd actually been able to ask Iraia Winner if she'll come-- but first thing's first.  Preventers is the biggest hurdle.  Dealing with a decades-old family drama that spans all of Space is small dice, compared this showdown with Sally.  His teeth hurt from all the fake grinning.

Sally doesn't blink.  She's the Director of Preventers, after all, and it takes more than Toru's got to really throw her.  Her face takes on a brittle look, though.

'Right,' Toru says, and takes the opportunity to flee.  He slides out the way he came in.  Franka gives him a little wave on his way by, and Toru tries not to look like he's running for his life.  He manages a reasonably dignified nod, then spoils it by running full-body slam into Ishaq.  'Oh,' he stutters, 'sorry, sorry.'

Ishaq steadies him amiably.  'Why is the Director trying to murder you with the strength of her eyes?'

'Long story.'  Toru knows better than to check for himself.  He can feel her spearing his spine with her glare, anyway.  'Um, I may need you.  Quatre may need you.'

'Of course.'

'You can say no,' Toru points out, mildly exasperated by rote.  'At least ask what I'm asking you for, first.'

Ishaq is smart enough to take that clue and put it together with the presence of both the Director and her Deputy.  'What did you do this time?'

'Long story.  But if you could break into Quatre's room, search his things, and find something about his sister that would lead us to where she is today, that would be great.'  Toru puts on his saintliest smile, and if he thought his teeth were rotting from sugar before, now he's fairly convinced his face is going to break.

Ishaq regards him through narrowed eyes for a long minute.  But, in the end, all he does is shrug.  'All right,' he agrees.

Even in victory Toru sabotages himself.  'Really?'

'If I leave it to you to do it yourself, this will explode into a thousand worse problems,' Ishaq says.  He gives Toru a nudge as he passes by.  'Tell him we're all thinking of him.'

Toru leads with that, when Quatre wakes at last, around two in the morning.  Toru is into jaw-cracking yawns by then, though Ricciardi, who can nap anywhere, pops his eyes open and looks like he's never been snoring in the corner when Quatre rolls his head to look.

'Hospital,' Ricciardi says, propping his elbow on Quatre's gurney and leaning down for a quick kiss.  'About nine hours.  Heart attack.  Just for the record, you were technically dead for two minutes.'

'Hardly a blip, then,' Quatre says breezily, and Ricciardi goes very still for a second, until Quatre wrinkles his nose.  'Sorry,' he adds, rather meekly.

'Sorry,' Ricciardi repeats in a strangled tone.  'Yeah.  Good start.'

Quatre clears his throat and looks at Toru instead.  'Is Anders all right?'

'Anders is just damn fine.  He's not the one subjecting himself to insane psychic pressures for Science.'

'For Preventers,' Ricciardi mutters, and rises to avail himself of the coffee press Franka brought on her last drop-by.

Quatre's eyes follow his boyfriend.  Toru can't read minds, true enough, but he can guess what Quatre's thinking.  That Ricciardi is starting to sound awfully familiar, these days.  Maybe it's inevitable, when people like Quatre get too close to an organisation like Preventers.  Preventers aren't out to crush Newtypes, at least not anymore, but some days the bureaucratic weight achieves the same end.  Unlike Trowa Barton, however, Ricciardi lives inside that system.  If he throws over Preventers in a moral snit, it's going to be a lot harder on him.

'Could I please see my chart?' Quatre asks after a moment.  Toru brings it, and another pillow for Quatre's back as Quatre sits up.

'They do employ doctors,' Toru says, watching Quatre read.  'You're a talented guy, but I know that might as well be Swahili.'

Quatre walks right into the opening Toru's left him, though he seems to realise-- or maybe just reads it off Toru when he feels a little surge of achievement-- that he's walking into a trap.  'We don't have much choice in trusting their medical staff... we all agree on that.'

Exactly.  'What if there was someone you could trust absolutely?'

'No.'

'Could you maybe pretend to consider this?'

'No,' Quatre says, and his face is closed off in a way Toru hasn't seen in a long time.

'Well... I already rang my Aunt Relena.'

'Toru, _no_.'

'Toru no what?' Ricciardi complains.  'I hate it when you do that thing.  You know no-one else knows what you're talking about?'

'His sister is a doctor,' Toru says over his shoulder, and turns back to find Quatre grinding his jaws.  'She's a surgeon on L4.  And Quatre has it in his contract with Preventers that Newtypes can seek outside medical help without penalty or consultation.  It's perfect, Quatre.  Someone you could trust--'

'To provide exactly the same medical care I'm receiving now.'

'To provide an objective and unbiased viewpoint about things like the serum and these experiments.'

'To bias me in the other direction, you mean.'

'What's the problem?' Ricciardi says.  'Sounds great.'

Quatre heaves a hard sigh.  'I thought we all agreed that setting me up to fight Preventers on everything is neither useful nor--'

'What I agree is that you lose objectivity when you're off the serum.  You've got Toru yanking you in one direction and the Milkmaid with her siren song pulling in the other and you get lost trying to maintain the middle.'

Toru blinks at that.  'Is that really happening?' he asks tentatively.  'I thought the feedback loop...'  He clears his throat.  'So having someone you trust--'

'He trusts plenty,' Ricciardi disagrees.  'In fact I like the idea that you wouldn't trust Sis, if you get what I mean.  You might wake the fuck up, Quat, that would be worth it.'  He checks his watch and stretches, cracking his neck and shoulders.  'I'm on duty in four hours.  I need to lay flat for three of those.'  He tilts Quatre's face up for a kiss, brushing a thumb over Quatre's unrelenting scowl.  'It'll be okay, kid.  Just relax.  You make good decisions when you make them for yourself, you know.'

Toru sits chewing his lip as Ricciardi shows himself out.  Quatre looks worn out, looks, well, like a man who had a cardiac event at age forty.  The circles under his eyes are unusually dark and his face has a hollow cast.  Toru thinks of it belatedly, and unplugs the iPod from its charging socket.  Quatre only puts in one of the earbuds, resting back on his pillows in a deflated sort of way.  Toru occupies himself pouring a glass of water and getting an extra blanket from the cupboard and showing Quatre the drawing from Beatriz.  That, at least, elicits a genuine smile.

'I really don't want Iraia here,' Quatre says then, over the pounding beat of Judas Priest.  'Toru.  Truly.  I don't want her to see me here.'

Toru drops into Ricciardi's chair.  'I would have understood that about St John's, but this is different.'

'It's not.  It's worse, really.'  Quatre closes his mouth on whatever he meant to say next.  'Please just don't.  I'm not threatening, I'm begging you.  I do not want this.'

He can't pretend he didn't hear the need in that.  'Okay,' he agrees helplessly.  'I really just thought it would protect you.'

'You can't,' Quatre says.  'And I don't want you to feel responsible when something happens.  Something will.'

That doesn't feel so much like wisdom as like a prediction.  Toru gets goosepimples.  'Quatre--'

'There's one thing we've left out of this experiment.'  Quatre drops his eyes, fiddling with the other earbud.  'We haven't contacted Mars in years.'

That hits Toru with no warning.  He fish-mouths a minute, trying to gather scattered thoughts.  'The serum,' he starts, and bites his lip.  'I understand.  Understood.'

'I want to try.  Before anything else.  If this is going poorly-- I just want to know we tried this.'

That's two hints.  'What do you know?' Toru demands.  'What's going to happen?'

'Nothing,' Quatre dismisses it, shaking his head.  'I don't mean anything by it.  Just that if something did happen--'

'That's not what you said.  You said "something will happen" and "before anything else"--'

'Did you record me?'

'Quatre!'

'Nothing,' Quatre cuts him off.  'Life.  Whatever Preventers is planning, that's what I think, all right, that Preventers is planning something and that's why the urgency behind this experiment with our abilities, and it's going to involve me, that's why the focus.  They want me to do something.  Sally's nothing but anticipation and determination out there, and there's something in Tatiana's mind she's not sharing, blocking me somehow, or just disciplined enough to never think of it directly and I don't know what it is but it's--'  He cuts himself off, breathing hard.  'I want to do this before whatever it is hits.  You deserve it.'

His own mind is firing off in all directions.  Wanting to chase down Quatre's suspicions and those hints that something is brewing.  Wanting to protest about how Quatre thinks he has to protect everyone else and fights anyone protecting him.  How Quatre needs protecting, not just for himself, but because he's the heart of the Newtypes, even if he's the only one of them who can't use his ability, can't be with them without suffering.  In the end, all he says is, 'I'd feel better about it if you hadn't just been dead and bleeding, you know.'  
  
Quatre reaches for his hand.  Toru takes it.  'See if you can get us some time,' Quatre says, and lets him go with a squeeze.  'Tell them I'm tired or something.  Something that won't cause us further difficulty down the road.  We need some time in the tanks.  And maybe don't tell Cass.  He's upset and he doesn't understand.'

'I don't either,' Toru grumbles, but he agrees.  He always does, after all.  'If you're tired, sleep.'

'You, too.'

He gives in to his leftover anxieties.  He encircles Quatre's shoulders in an awkward hug, and feels Quatre's hands come to a hesitant rest on his back.  He clears his throat as he rises.  'See you in the morning.  Not too early in the morning.  Sleep well.'

By the time he makes it back to Newtype Central it's well after three.  His escort leaves him at the door, and Toru barely notices that there are lights on in the common room as he trudges by.  He's only interested in his bed, at this point.  He kicks off his shoes in the corridor, drops his coat as soon as he's at his own room, and collapses face-first onto his mattress still fully dressed.  He almost groans at how good it feels.

'Toru?'

He almost groans again.  He bites it off into his pillow.  'Hey, Ishaq.'  He claws his way upright.  'Um.  Sorry.  What?'

'I think I found something we can use.  To contact Quatre's family.'  Ishaq is holding a plastic bag with something in it.  Toru squints and can't tell what it is.  'But it might not work for his sister--'

'Oh,' Toru says guiltily.  'He doesn't want us to contact the sister.  Like, really really doesn't want it.'

'Oh.'  Ishaq stands there in Toru's doorway leaning on the jamb, looking thoughtful, not irritated by the wasted effort.  'I think we should,' he says then.

'Should-- what?'

'Contact his sister.'

'You saw something, didn't you.  About him or her?'

'In all honesty I'm not entirely sure.  But you're worn out.  We'll talk in the morning.'  Ishaq steps back, then returns.  'Sorry, I almost forgot.  Is this yours?  I found it in the kitchen.'

It's an envelope.  His name is definitely written on it, though he doesn't recognise the handwriting.  It's sealed with a thick layer of tape.  Toru flops out an arm for it.  There's nothing inside it, that's even weirder.  No, just a tiny little square of paper.  A label of some kind.  Like fancy hotel paper, or official letterhead.  It's just an address, in gold ink that's gone dark brass with age.

Lake Victoria.  Weird.

Weird like that piece of ceramic someone else sent him.  No, one was weird.  Two is freaking him out.

'I hate mystery,' Toru mutters, and throws himself down on his bed.  Maybe if he refuses to come out in the morning, all of this crap will just go away.


	4. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It's not that I'm suspicious, exactly. I just-- this is kind of what it's like, for Newtypes. Even if you're exactly what you seem to be, I'm kind of-- messed up about it._

'Do you know what the memory was?'

'He's avoiding the question.'

'I would think Preventers would be pushing for the details?'

Toru gnaws at a sharp edge to his fingernail. 'I mean, he doesn't, like, say he won't answer or make anything up. He's doing what he does. Did. He knows when people are going to ask him so he vomits up a distraction. It's only obvious if you know what to look for. Or when he goes really bizarre. He asked Tatiana what her favourite number is and then went into this whole jag about number theory. The rest of us were--' He shrugs, disgusted.

Annelise taps the arm of her chair. She never takes notes during their session, which occasionally bothers Toru, if only because it makes him wonder whether there's some other form of recording going on. Not that he has any choice about it. The psych sessions are mandatory for all Newtypes. Annelise isn't a Preventer, or at least she never talks like she is. Toru doesn't know. Like the possibility of surveillance, it doesn't really matter. He can't do anything about it.

Except confine the sessions to the most impersonal topics he can. He knows the unwritten rules; he has to share, and he has to share something that sounds important or the brass will start wondering what he's hiding. But he doesn't talk about himself, not really. He doesn't talk about how he feels, why he feels. It's his own private rebellion. And protection. Annelise is more than close enough to observe that Toru is not like the other Newtypes. Her non-notes are probably required reading for the entire command structure.

Annalise pulls a Quatre, and asks him a question he's not expecting. 'Why are you so against this experiment they have him involved in?'

'Why am I so--' Toru raises his eyebrows at her. He's used his last three sessions to bitch about it.

'Sure.' Annelise folds her hands over her chubby stomach, smiling her matronly smile at him. 'Not to put too fine a point on this, but you were the one who brought him in to Preventers a few years back, right? That was basically an experiment.'

'No,' Toru interrupts, sitting up straight on his sofa. 'No, it wasn't anything like that. He was a contractor. We brought him on because Ivan Rhzevsky was a Newtype and we needed an expert.'

'Of course. But it went further than that, didn't it?' She brushes her greying hair behind an ear. 'It's okay. I had most of the story from Quatre.'

Toru slumps back against the cushion. 'I thought you weren't supposed to share what the others say in their sessions.'

'I think that's fairly general.  And you had to expect they briefed me.'

Paranoia is a common trait for Newtypes.  Annelise learnt that defence early.

'I'm against it,' Toru says carefully, 'because it's clearly unhealthy and dangerous.  And because they're pushing an unhealthy man to make decisions against his own self-interest.  I'm willing to believe they just took advantage of a coincidence with the serum and that these tests seem harmless on their own, but they're pushing him way past what the rest of us did.  They always do.  It's their way of reminding Newtypes we work for them.'

'Toru,' Annelise chides him.  'You know that's not true.'

'I know it's not substantiated.'

There's a slight pause while she decides whether she's going to follow that primrose path with him, or keep on track.  Toru puts on his most mulish expression, sticking out his lower lip like the sullen teenager he never was and hunching his shoulders.  Maybe he's laying it on too thick, though, because Annelise clearly decides it's just a distraction, and smiles brightly at him.  Fail.  Quatre's better at it.

'I'd like to talk about your relationship with Quatre,' she says then.

'All we do is talk about my relationship with Quatre,' Toru replies, startled by that.

'We talk about events in your relationship with Quatre.'  She lets him sit on that, for a moment.  'We do talk about him a lot, yes.  Why, you think?'

'Why what?'

'Why is what he thinks and does and says to you so important?'

This is a new tactic.  Toru doesn't like new tactics.  He chews the inside of his cheek.  'He's the closest thing we have to a leader.'

'No,' Annelise corrects him gently.  'You are.'

'What?'  Now he stares at her.  'What are-- do you--'

'The way you talk about him, feel about him, the others feel about you,' Annelise says.  She shrugs a little.  'I thought for a while you were modest, or playing cagey with me.  An outsider.  I understand that, and I understand this isn't an entirely willing situation.  But I think you genuinely don't realise it.  The Newtypes look to you.'

'I'm the youngest,' Toru protests, finding that profoundly disturbing.  'I didn't even know what I was til I met Quatre.  All of this-- this programme is all because of Quatre, and he's the one who found most of the Newtypes, well, him and Ishaq I guess--'

'I think you should ask Quatre.'

'Ask Quatre what?'

'Who he thinks is the leader.'

'Sometimes Quatre doesn't know really obvious things,' Toru dismisses that.  'St John's messed him up.  You know that's what I meant to tell you, St John's-- did you ever get his treatment record from Canada?  I think he's starting to feel--'

'Toru.'  Annelise checks her watch, and rises.  'We have a few minutes left, but why don't we call it a halt.  'Do yourself a favour and just ask him, all right?  You don't have to do anything about his answer, no matter what he says.  But I think it's important for you to know what he thinks about this.'

Toru feels a little like he missed the last step on a staircase and tripped unexpectedly.  'Um,' he says, and clambers out of the sofa's deep cushions.  'Okay, I-- I mean-- I don't know if I will or won't.'

'Hmm,' Annelise says, and gets the door for him as she always does.  She pats him on the arm as he passes her.  'See you Friday.'

Ishaq and Jemmy are waiting for him outside.  Jemmy had the session before Toru's, but Ishaq isn't even a Tuesday appointment, which means he made a special trip.  The psych sessions are one of the few things Newtypes do away from Newtype Central, though to this day Toru doesn't know who decided that.  Or why.  Maybe just an overabundance of caution.  Setting up a psychiatry office right next to a bunch of Newtypes practising astral projection and telepathy in the tanks down the hall might be intimidating.  Or stupid, if you're worried about confidentiality.  Probably someone up the command chain deemed it a security risk, though Toru thinks Preventers assumed the Newtypes shared everything in some kind of hive-mind, in the early days.  By now Preventers has plenty of evidence the Newtypes are just like any other group of people.  Sometimes they get along, sometimes they fight.  Sometimes Anders is an asshole, and sometimes Toru remembers to just avoid him.  And sometimes Quatre speaks for all of them, which Toru maintains is because Quatre's their leader and always has been, though-- sometimes not.  And now that he thinks about it, he realises Quatre's always been very careful to specify when he doesn't.  Which has been kind of a lot, lately.

Ishaq nods a greeting.  'Go well?'

'I don't really know how to answer that,' Toru settles for saying.  'Something up?'

They have an escort, an agent who's not obviously armed and who knows them well enough to give them actual privacy, trailing them at a distance while he reads something on his phone.  Toru checks enough to be sure they're really out of ear-shot, and promptly forgets the man is there.  Jemmy is slower to accept it, but when he nods she picks up the thread.

'I think there's something going on with Preventers,' she murmurs, sticking her hands in the pockets of her loose trousers.  There are fresh henna designs on the shaved sides of her head, curling around her ears.  Iva's drawing is getting pretty good.

'Okay,' Toru says.  'So what's new about that.'

'We believe the testing with Quatre is about something more than just gathering data on him they've wanted all these years,' Ishaq says.  He, too, has a lowered voice, and he's snapping his fingers as he walks, which Toru takes as odd til he realises it's an auditory thunderclap, as far as listening devices go.  And that kind of paranoia had long been put to rest, he thinks-- he thought, anyway.  Quatre would never have agreed to take the serum two years ago if he'd believed the Newtypes needed his ability to judge whether they're under such intrusive surveillance.  Not to mention the budget expenditure and the manpower to bug twenty Newtypes all day, every day, on the off chance they say something conspiratorial.

Which this is.  Toru glances back for their escort.  He coughs loudly, follows it with an exaggerated sniffle.  'What would they want, then,' he mumbles into his sleeve.

'I think they want to see how he pairs with everyone.'  Jemmy squints at the clouds overhead.  'They want to see how he works with other Newtypes.'

That's just the slightest twist on what Preventers have told them they're doing; using Quatre to measure and quantify Newtype talents is a reasonable interpretation of Quatre's ability, reasonable enough anyway that Toru hadn't been surprised they wanted it.  But taking that a step further-- if Quatre is really who they're after, and they're trying to figure out some way to leverage his ability, that means they're planning on withholding the serum at the end of this experiment, and that means they're getting him ready to venture back into the world with someone who can--

Jesus.  With Toru, who's been standing next to Quatre for two weeks of daily experiments, supporting his range, keeping him calm.  Preventers remember how Quatre was with Sun.  Newtykes stabilise Newtypes-- not that Preventers know exactly what they're observing, but they're more than capable of observing it.  Toru curses under his breath.

'I don't like where this is going,' he mutters, and Ishaq agrees with a grim nod.

'That's why I think we should follow through on bringing in his sister,' Jemmy says.  'Ishaq told a few of us--'

Toru glares.  Ishaq only shrugs.

'And we're all agreed,' Jemmy finishes, evidently choosing not to comment on that byplay.  'It's the smart move.  We need allies and outsiders who can stay between Preventers and Quatre more effectively than we can.'

'Except that Quatre explicitly said he doesn't want us to bring Iraia Winner here.'  They're within sight of Newtype Central now, but who knows what's going on in there or who else counts as 'a few of us' in the know about what they're plotting.  Toru pretends to discover an unlaced shoe and drops into a crouch to tie and retie his laces.  The other two mill around him, Jemmy blocking their escort's sightline and Ishaq putting himself between Toru and the nearest security camera.  It's the kind of grace and efficiency that speaks to a lot more practise than Toru thought everyone was getting.  Since when-- or all along?  He thinks he would have noticed if everyone were acting this dodgy all the time.

No, he absolutely would have.  It's what he does around Quatre, after all.  It's everyone else doing it for Toru that shakes him.

'If we do this,' Toru says softly, 'we might lose Quatre's trust.  We lose his trust, he might decide not to share something critical.  With us or with his sister.  She's no help if he won't cooperate with her.'

'You're not thinking about what would actually happen once she got here,' Ishaq murmurs, gazing into the middle distance over Toru's head.  'Yes, he might be upset and isolated.  But he'll be busy dealing with that, instead of trying to deal with Preventers, and Preventers will have a family drama to distract them.  And that sums up to delay.  Delay is what we need right now, til we know more about what they're doing.  It brings Preventers to us on our own terms, not theirs.'

'I won't spring this on him.  I won't use him like that.'

'Toru,' Jemmy says, 'it's exactly the kind of thing he does all the time.'

There may be truth to that.  And it may include the truth that not everyone who joined the Newtypes in Brussels did it entirely voluntarily.  Jemmy and Ishaq did, but Toru knows the sound of a warning, however oblique.  Justified.

Toru rubs his face.  He yanks out his ponytail to loosen the tight tug on his scalp.  'Make the call.  But I am going to warn Quatre, and explain.'

Ishaq squeezes his shoulder.  'Do you want me with you for that?'

'No.'  He doesn't want Quatre to hear bad news in front of an audience.  He stops dithering over his shoe and rises.  'Eye on the details,' he says then.  'Preventers will obstruct in little ways, not obvious ones.  She'll have to pay her own ticket, get her own hotel, car, Sally said something about credentials.  I know the Winners have money and influence.  It might be useful to bring Mrs Winner throwing it around a little.  They're used to Quatre playing reasonable.  Let's show them what it looks like when someone fights back.'

Jemmy and Ishaq have what they wanted, which might account for the smiles of satisfaction they give him, the way Jemmy gives him the hard thump on the shoulder that's roughly equivalent to Ishaq's gentle thanks.  They head off without him, and Toru rolls his head on his shoulders, wincing at the crack of bones in his neck.  If he waits on this, he'll chicken out.  Better to keep flinging himself forward.  The landing will be harder when he finally hits, but if he's lucky he can put it off a while more.

He beckons the agent.  'Sorry,' he says.  'I was thinking I could go back to the hospital instead?  I'd like to see Mr Winner.'

Though it's mid-afternoon, Quatre's asleep when Toru arrives.  He sits at Quatre's bedside for a while, thinking gloomy thoughts about the best way to spring this on him.  Good surprise-- family reunion!  Hemming and hawing so Quatre knows he thought it was a bad idea, maybe?  Except that he didn't, really, and he just agreed to it a second time, and Quatre is going to read that off him anyway.  Once he realises Quatre is going to know he's culpable he wastes five minutes trying to go the other direction, an increasingly defencive argument in his head blowing up to hyperbolic proportions, ending with Quatre storming out with his hospital gown flapping in the wind.  Except it probably won't be that way, will it.  Once upon a time Quatre might have stormed out on him, but not anytime lately.  He'll go quiet and shrivel up on the bed, pull everything back behind a polite smile and wither away in silence.  That's infinitely worse.

'Mr Peacecraft?'

It's Franka the med student.  She brings in a tray with a little pot of tea and cream and sets it on the rolling table over Quatre's gurney.  He stirs a little, probably hearing her with his ability more than his ears, but doesn't wake.  Toru frowns over that til Franka taps the hanging banana bag of some clear fluid connected to the line in Quatre's arm.  'Very mild,' she promises Toru.  'More to keep him asleep once he drops off naturally.'

Toru was standing next to him when Doctor Mahtan hit all the main points of recovery from a heart attack.  Still, Toru takes some reassurance from the pleasant lack of worry on Franka's face.  He doesn't get any kind of deceptive vibe off her-- not that his track record with pretty Preventers agents is stellar.

Still, he makes himself smile.  'You've been great,' he says.  'Thank you.'

'It's not hard to be kind.  I think it's probably harder to be cruel, really.'  Franka invites herself onto the stool the doctors use, though she only briefly logs into the computer to add a few lines to the chart, and logs out immediately.  She faces Toru with her ankles crossed, the toe of her pink trainer tapping the air.  'How are you doing?' she asked.

'Me?  Fine.'

'You look tired,' she says.  'Sleeping okay?'

'Mostly,' he hedges.  'I mean, obviously, wishing I hadn't, you know, seen.  Seen that happen to him.  Kind of scary.'  That makes him sound like a child.  'Frightening,' he synonymises.  'Um.'

Franka only nods.  He didn't notice it before; she has a piercing through the outer round of her ear, a little charm that twinkles silver.  A cross, maybe.  With her hair in a wrap it's on display.  'I know they make you talk to someone,' Franka says.  'But if you'd like to actually talk, as a friend, I'd listen.'

The last time he shared anything personal with a pretty Preventers agent, she reported on him to their command.  Toru wonders miserably if he's going to distrust every woman who comes within five feet of him.  But he can't help that offer making him uncomfortable, and it dulls the little glow of nerves and thrill in his gut.  He doesn't know if Sally would be crass enough to set him up twice.  Maybe not.  Sally probably wouldn't risk it, given Quatre in close proximity.  She'd waited til Quatre was out of the picture to sic Micheko Walker on him, and that had been more a case of taking advantage of a connection Toru had already had.  Then again, all the medical staff here are probably hand-picked.

He's going in circles.  He clears his throat, and decides to just say it.  'My last girlfriend spied on me for Director Po,' he mumbles, and clears his throat again.  'It's not that I'm suspicious, exactly.  I just-- this is kind of what it's like, for Newtypes.  Even if you're exactly what you seem to be, I'm kind of-- messed up about it.'

Oh, God.  As soon as it's out of his mouth he loathes himself.  That was insane, and self-pitying, and if she's not a plant then she's definitely turned off.  No-one wants to date a depressed hermit.

Franka only looks thoughtful.  'I can see how you would be,' she says.  'I guess that explains why you haven't rung me up.'

'No, definitely.  I mean-- I mean I do like, I like-- I do like you.'  Oh, _God_.  He's blushing.  He's twenty and he's blushing like a schoolkid.

'Oh, that I knew.'  She gives him a smile with a little smirky curl to the right side of her mouth, and it makes him blush harder.  'Your friend here already gave me the full picture.  Favourite food is steak frites, very passable.  Except that it's actually Haribo Strawbs.'  She pulls a packet from her pocket, and holds it out.  Toru takes it.  They aren't in the vending, so she'd got it somewhere else, maybe in town, and carried it around for him.  His face is going to explode from all the blood pressure in his cheeks.  'You grew up here, but you're not from here, and you lived with the Director when you were a kid, which explains why you're so weird with each other.  You were an agent, and now you're not, for reasons that seem kind of silly to me.  And you're sweet with the little girl and loyal to your friend, and the last movie you saw was _Doom Mountain_ , which can't be allowed to stand.  I guess you'll have to go out with me so you can see _Novemberman_.  It's much better.'

Nothing crushes a date faster than having to admit you need to request a day-pass in triplicate.  'I...' Toru says.

Franka cocks her head.  'Is it putting you off that I'm asking you out?  I didn't figure you'd be the type to mind.'

'I'm not.  I just, um.  It's kind of hard for us, Newtypes I mean, to get... out... you might have to do some paperwork, and I know that's awful and stupid and you probably don't want to go to that kind of trouble just for a trip to a cinema, I can't even get us a car--'

'I have it on disc,' Franka says brightly.  'Maybe we could watch it at your place?'

'You-- wouldn't mind?'

She smiles.  And puts her hand out to him.  'Give me one of those Strawbs,' she says.  'I've been craving them all day.'

There is no way Quatre sleeps through their flirting, and definitely no way he sleeps through the first awkward kiss exchanged at the door, with Toru figuring out how to stoop low enough to match Franka's height and Franka giving him a smouldering little glance through her eyelashes that promises a movie is not the only thing scheduled for Thursday.  Toru walks to the loo to give himself some cool-down time, and also time to suffer his doubts in privacy.  He doesn't want Quatre overhearing his roiling thoughts, like how he doesn't know if there's enough to talk about with Franka, when all he really knows about her is that she's a Preventer and studies medicine and wears a fruity-smelling perfume that's mingling with the taste of the candy on his tongue.  He knew Micheko from working with her, admired her for what felt like ages before he, well, before she made a move to let him know it was okay for him to make a move, though admittedly Quatre had something to do with that, too, which makes Toru feel worse.  He's not really a wimp, but he saves his bravery for gunfights, not girls, evidently.  And-- well, it's been two years, and he didn't so much date Micheko as sneak around with her off hours.  A movie could be fun, but what if Franka wants him to take her out to dinner or for long moonlit walks or whatever people actually do on dates?  And, God.  If he has Franka over to Newtype Central, every single one of the Newtypes will be all over his new girlfriend.  He'll never hear the end of it, and he's not sure he can stand unsolicited dating advice from twenty people who already know way too much about him.

He returns to Quatre's room to find him sitting up with a pillow propped behind his shoulder.  Toru straightens it, and Quatre murmurs a thanks, sipping from his probably lukewarm tea.  There are bags under his eyes purple enough to look like bruises, and the little folds next to his mouth seem more prominent than normal, frown lines rather than the usual smile.  Toru sprawls in his chair, picks up the iPod, and sets it to play without the earbuds.

Quatre raises an eyebrow at that.  'You really think we're under surveillance?'

He doesn't question Quatre knowing the reason, whether it's a good guess or picking it out of Toru's brain.  He turns up the volume, and sits back to chew a ragged thumbnail.  'What do you think of her?' he asks.

'Your not-so-secret admirer?  She's charming.'  Quatre picks at the label on his teabag.  'You don't like her?  You don't have to marry her, you know.  Just give things a try.'

'Not who I meant.'  Feedback loop.  He stops gnawing his finger raw, and Quatre immediately drops his fidgeting.  Interesting.  'You never dated anyone?  I mean, after-- I mean, while you were at St John's?'

'There wasn't exactly opportunity.  I was a patient.  It wouldn't have been ethical for any of the staff, assuming any of them were gay men of an appropriate age, which they weren't.'

Granted Quatre was at the facility for twenty years, not the two Toru's spent in Newtype Central, but he can't help the little flinch he has, contemplating that.  The length of his entire life, a lonely way to live.  Maybe he should stop worrying so much about how it'll go with Franka and just be glad there's something going at all.

'Quite,' Quatre says.  'So who did you mean, if not her?'

Feedback loop.  Toru takes a deep breath, reaches for calm, and clears his mind.  He waits for Quatre's shoulders to slump a little, for him to lean into his pillows just a little more.  It's cheating, a little, but he doesn't want a shouting match with an ailing man.  'Your sister, Iraia.'

Quatre tenses right back up.  'Toru.'

Toru sits forward, propping his elbows on his knees.   _There are reasons for us to do this_ , he thinks, and knows by Quatre's frowning brows he hears.   _There are reasons to think this whole experiment they have you in is a smokescreen for something else.  And even if it weren't, you put that clause into your contract for exactly this purpose.  You need and deserve medical care from someone who doesn't have an agenda._

'What do you actually know about my family?  Whatever you learnt about me when you were with Preventers, whatever background they had, or got from OZ or whomever.'

'I know you had a falling-out with your father over joining the Rebellion.  I know he threatened to cut off your trust, but he died before he could.  Romafeller passed that law that denied funds to anyone allegedly involved in Resistance activity, but you had it restored after the war.  I know you had help from your sister before you went to St John's, Mr Barton told me about that.  She put you in a medically-induced coma, but it didn't work.'

'Yes, she did.  She was very gracious to help, considering she blames me for what happened after our father's death.'

Toru chews his lower lip, til he remembers to stop himself from spreading any anxiety where Quatre will pick up on it.  'Why would she blame you?'

'Well,' Quatre says, 'she was with me when he was shot down in front of us.  And she didn't have a psychotic break that ended with a rampage through Space and the destruction of a satellite with fourteen people who failed to evacuate in the time I gave them.  So I did to fourteen people what we'd just seen OZ do to our father.  There's reasons for everything, Toru.  There's always good reasons for everything.'

'Quatre.'  He doesn't know what to say to that, how to react to that.  What he feels is something like compassion, or maybe it's too heavy on the confusion for that.  Not for the first time he thinks Quatre must have been absolutely overwhelming as a teenager.

Teenager.  'She hasn't seen you at all since you were eighteen?  When you went into St John's?'  He waits for Quatre's stiff nod.  'Well, there you go.'

'Where do I go?'

'You haven't seen her in twenty years, either.  It's just possible, you know, that she doesn't blame you anymore.  People grow up.'

The hint of uncertainty is probably the best win he's going to have.  Toru backs off, and Quatre doesn't come after him.  It's not the same as fulsome agreement, but a sliver of doubt is enough to get Iraia Winner in the same room as her baby brother.  If it blows up once she's here, well.  Toru's had to apologise for worse in his time.

So he turns on the television and they watch an afternoon rerun of some old detective show, Sherlock Holmes and the Something Or Other.  Toru saves the last few Strawbs, feeling the plastic bag crinkle in his pocket whenever he shifts.  Quatre looks like he needs another few days of sleep, but never really drops off, staring at the screen with his mind obviously on other things.

 _Do you think Preventers really understands what we do with the tanks?_ Toru asks abruptly.

Quatre glances at him.  'Probably not,' he replies.  'I don't entirely understand it, scientifically.'

_But they don't know what we're actually doing.  Things like speaking to Mars._

'It's just an environment for enhanced experience.  What those experiences are, that's different for each of us.  The fact that I can use them when I'm taking the serum just indicates there's a level at which, experientially, Normals and Newtypes are doing something similar.  It's not that different from smoking weed or taking pills.  Anyone can trip.'

If they are under surveillance, this is going to sound bizarre to anyone listening and hearing just Quatre's side of things.   _When's the last time you tried to reach anyone at Koh-i-Noor?_

Quatre looks at him, really looks at him.  'She didn't go back there.'

He wasn't really thinking about Sun.  Maybe.   _Have you ever told Ricciardi?_

Abruptly Quatre looks away.  He scratches his beard, forcibly smooths his bedsheet over his lap.  'When he asks questions, I answer.  Not unreservedly.  But you can't hide everything.  You'd go mad.'

I know, Toru thinks, mostly to himself.  He knows, because Quatre is one of the most honest people he knows, actually.  For all the games he plays with Preventers, it's never been so much about lying as keeping back the small bits of the truth that would make it impossible to work together.  Even when he thought of Preventers as the enemy, he'd reached out to Toru.  Told him things about the world, the past, his parents, the Newtypes that he hadn't shared with anyone else, because Toru needed to hear it, desperately wanted to know it.  And because Quatre had wanted to share it with someone.

But he's started down this path, and so he asks what he really means to ask.   _If you tell me you think it would be better for us to be totally honest with Preventers, we'll do that.  If you think they're being honest with us, about why they want you off the serum now.  I'll do whatever you think is best.  I trust you to do the right thing for all of us._

What's disquieting, he realises, watching Quatre watch the television and say nothing and look like someone just asked him the hardest question he's ever heard, is that Quatre doesn't seem to trust himself to know the answer.


	5. Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It's impossible to read her face behind those big dark glasses. Now she looks more like Quatre, the way Quatre had been when Toru had first worked with him in London. Swallowed up by the world, suffering, hunched in on the weight of it._

Kissing Franka tastes a lot like bubblegum lipgloss.

Not that Toru is thinking much about, well, anything.  She's an enthusiastic kisser.  A really enthusiastic kisser, and a really good kisser, in Toru's admittedly limited experience.  They get about halfway through a movie that Toru knows he won't remember anything about later, then Franka turns to him, moves their bowl of kettlecorn to the table, and says very seriously, 'Ready to make out like there's no tomorrow?'

'Oh,' Toru says, 'uh, yea-- I-- oh, you know, defini-- yeah.'

It's one of his suaver moments.  Overturning the popcorn when Franka puts her hand on his thigh is not.

But the pressure stays low.  It's just kissing, and once he realises that hands are going to stay in places appropriate to a common area in group housing where an impressionable child may wander through any moment, he can just enjoy without having to worry about doing anything wrong.  He does enjoy.  He enjoys the way she takes her hair out of its ponytail so he can play with it, enjoys the way she plays with his too, enjoys the way she sighs when he nips at her earlobe and arches her long neck.

But all good things come to an end.  And _Novemberman_ is only eighty minutes long, not counting the credits, so that puts an end to that.

Franka eases back on the couch with a sigh, and uses the clicker to eject the disc.  'Like it?' she asks, a wicked smile curling her plumped pink lips.

'I think I might need a second viewing to form a definitive opinion,' Toru answers.

Franka laughs.  'You're cute,' she says, and scoops an errant bit of kettlecorn back into the bowl.  'Show me around?'

'Yeah?  Oh, sure.'  Toru joins her on her feet, and Franka takes his hand.  That, Toru thinks, is very nice indeed.  'Well, we can start in the kitchen, it's just there, and get rid of the popcorn.'

There's not all that much to see, but from Franka's perspective Toru gets why she's interested.  He imagines there's all sorts of rumours about Newtype Central, though it's not anything more special than a hangar made over for living space.  It's been improved with time from its hasty inception-- they have real windows now, a marked uptick in trust from the early days when Command thought windows might have to be barred for safety-- and the impersonal homogeneity of the design has faded as the place grew lived-in.  Everyone's door has something personal hanging on it, even if it's just a nameplate or a recent drawing from Beatriz, and the corridors are littered with shoes, Anders' bike, the usual random assortment of lost gloves and hats, and there's music playing in several rooms, classical burbling out of the library, some kind of club mix in the exercise room, and one of Toru's picks, Tibetan Singing Bowls and Nature Sounds, in the tanks.

'Can I look?' Franka asks, about the tanks, and Toru checks they're empty before walking her in.  'I don't get it, what are they?'

'Sensory deprivation tanks,' Toru explains, lighting a couple of candles to alleviate the dark.  'We use these for meditation.  Um, other kinds of things.'

Franka turns her head up to his.  'You don't have to tell me if it's uncomfortable,' she says, and Toru manages a quick smile for that, glad for her sensitivity.

'It's not uncomfortable, exactly,' he says.  'Just hard to explain, I guess.'

'To a Normal.'

'To a Normal, yeah.'  He pushes his loose hair behind his ears as he sits on the edge of a tank.  'To be honest, not a lot of Normals are interested.  The only one who ever comes in here much is Cass.  Agent Ricciardi.  And he only comes if Quatre comes, and not even Quatre comes all that much.'

'Because Mr Winner's taking the serum usually?'  Franka sits beside him.  'The one that blocks out his Newtype abilities.'

'Yeah.  He'll meditate here, or help one of the others with whatever they're doing, but if you can't sense what someone else is doing, it's kind of just sitting in a dark wet room with a lot of quiet people.'

She grins a little at that.  'Takes the mystery right out of it, when you describe it like that.'

'It's not a mystery, not really.  I mean, there's a lot we still don't know.  But for the most part, we've figured out the how.'

'Is it always so hard on the body?  For all of you?'

'There's always a physical component.  It's harder for some of us than others.  Quatre's always had a-- a hard time.  Since he was younger than me.  That's why he spent so long at St John's--'

'I saw that name in his chart.  They sent along some medical records.'

That confirms their psychiatrist has seen them.  'Yeah, he was there for about twenty years.  No heart attacks, so far as I know, but he was a lot more careful there, too.  Or allowed to be more careful, I should say.'

'I guess it would be complicated by the cancer treatment, too.'

Toru doesn't feel an explosion in his mind or a gut-wrenching upswell of grief or anything, really.  At first all he feels is confusion.  'What?' he asks, like maybe he didn't hear her correctly.  'Cancer?'

Franka is faster on the draw.  Her face goes still and then a little pale.  'I assumed you knew.  You seem so close with him.'

'No.'  No feeling.  Still no feeling, and he wonders if this is what numb is, or if it just hasn't landed yet.  'Cancer,' he repeats.  'Quatre has cancer?'

'Sarcoma, actually, it's rare.  I don't think he's known for long, maybe a few months?  Toru, I'm really sorry.  I thought you knew or I wouldn't have said anything.'

He does feel something, then.  'God, does Ricciardi know?'  Quatre wouldn't keep that from him, would he?  But even as Franka is hesitating over that Toru is putting together clues he hadn't known were pieces of a mystery.  Quatre's mood being so uneven lately, the weird streak of fatalism, not asking questions about this experiment Command want to run and maybe not even caring about the why when the why would have consumed him totally before.  And Ricciardi does know, because Toru overheard Ricciardi ask Quatre if Toru knew yet.

And Quatre even told him, in Quatre's roundabout way.  Something's coming, he'd said.  He wants Toru to have contact with Mars again, because something is coming and he's not sure it won't go poorly, he'd said.

The light from the doorway dims, and Toru looks up to find a body blocking it.  Ishaq.  'Oh, hello,' Ishaq says, surprised to find them there, and eyes lighting with curiosity on Franka.  'Hello,' he says again, smiling a little more widely than usual, and somehow Toru has it in him to blush, despite everything.

'Hi.'  Franka recovers herself for a reasonably chipper greeting, hopping off the edge of the tank and extending a hand.  Toru slides off to intercept, but Ishaq handles himself just fine.

'I'm afraid I don't shake hands,' he apologises, 'but I'm very pleased to meet you.  Meet you formally; you're one of the doctors looking after Quatre?'

'Junior doctor, I'm only just out of medical school.  Franka.  It's Mr Khosa?'

'Ishaq will do nicely, now we're friends.'  Ishaq's warm brown eyes are wicked.  'I hope we'll be seeing more of you around here, Franka.  In fact, why don't you join us for dinner?  It's spaghetti night.'

'I don't want to intrude,' Franka begins, but Ishaq brushes that off, and Franka looks at Toru, a silent question.  If he's ready, if he can handle dinner on top of the hors d'oeuvre of unexpected revelations.

Toru musters a smile.  It must go down reasonably well, because Ishaq looks pleased.  'Can't miss spaghetti night,' Toru says, and it's approximately then that Toru loses all control of his date.

Franka gets another tour, this one for the purpose of introducing her to all the Newtypes who are emerging for the evening meal.  Toru trails along silently, absorbed in his thoughts, able to be because Ishaq is doing all the steering.  It's the sort of thing Quatre used to do, a mix of running interference and a genuine inclination toward the bright chatter of the 'get to know you' variety.  It's peppered, liberally, with tales of Toru's exploits, Ishaq's way of flirting on Toru's behalf, kind of, another thing Quatre used to do for him, when the recipient had been Micheko Walker, Toru's fellow agent.  In half an hour Ishaq has probably learnt more about Franka than Toru would have on his own in five dates-- she's got a much younger half-sister, estranged father, her medical specialisation is diagnostics-- Toru twitches at that-- her favourite colour is pink, and she's thoughtful, having brought along a treat of pink hair ribbons for Beatrix, who loses her shyness around a stranger who isn't glowing properly and stays firmly planted in Franka's lap until Iva calls her away to eat.  Toru, roped into setting the table, provides Franka with an extra plate and a bundle of silverware, and sits beside her as juice, water, and a few bottles of wine make their way down the row of diners.

'Overwhelmed yet?' Toru asks, quietly, pouring water for her.

Franka tosses him a bright smile.  'Everyone's lovely.  It's like a big family.'

'I wouldn't know,' Toru says, shrugging one shoulder.  'Sometimes it's a little much for me, all the noise.  Sally worked a lot when I was growing up, so it was mostly me and the nanny, or just me once I was old enough to be home alone.'

'Sally?  Like Director Sally Po?'

'Yeah.'  Toru offered, a year ago, to stop bringing it up if it would hurt Sally politically.  He thinks now that was a mistake, though he was only trying to help.  She'd been hurt that he'd think she would want him to conceal it, and Toru was hurt that she wouldn't give him more credit than that.  Since then, he's gone for blunt fact, and if it causes a problem, well, he tried.  'She raised me, after my parents were exiled.'

Franka looks at him with some kind of speculation in her eyes.  But then Ishaq, arriving from the kitchen bearing the big serving bowl of spaghetti bolognese, asks her a question, and she turns away to answer.

Jemmy leans in on Toru's other side.  'We reached Iraia Winner,' she tells him very softly, and Toru tries not to glance around to see if anyone else is listening.  'She's agreed to come.  She'll be here in three days.  It's the soonest we could manage.  And it gets better.  When we told her Quatre's in Preventers' custody, she hit the roof.  She doesn't trust Preventers.'

'Maybe because you made it sound like Quatre had been arrested and put under forced labour,' Toru whispers back crossly.  'That's not the right way to say it.'

'Isn't it?  From where I'm sitting, it's a fair characterisation.  If you don't like calling it forced, you can say coerced.  Preventers has all of us hostage to Quatre's cooperation.'

'That's not fair either, Jemmy.'

'But it's not a stretch,' she points out.

'No?  How's Iraia Winner going to take it when she gets here and sees everything's hunky dory and Quatre's doing all this voluntarily?'

'She'll think what the rest of us do,' Jemmy says.  'That Quatre convinces himself of what he has to, to protect the rest of us.'

'Toru?'  Franka catches his attention with a nudge.  She has the bowl of salad.  'Would you like any?'

Toru puts on a smile.  'Yeah, thanks.  Doing all right?'

'Doing great.'  She sets a scoop of shredded spinach on his plate.  'Ishaq invited me to the football game on Saturday.  Think we'll be teammates or competetors?'

'No couples,' Ishaq tells her from her other side.  'Unfair advantage.  Besides, nothing gets the blood up quite like a little contest, hm?'

Toru provides his blush on cue.  Franka laughs, and slides her hand over his knee.  He covers it with his own.  Maybe he can tell her about Iraia Winner coming?  It would be good to have someone in Preventers willingly sharing medical information.  Or maybe it's best to say nothing-- no.  She'll guess Toru is behind the Winner family reunion, and it might offend her that he's effectively manoeuvred her out of the way along with the rest of Preventers.  One more worry to chew on.  He's going to get an ulcer at this rate.  At least if he gets an ulcer, Franka might feel sorry enough for him to forgive him.

I really, really wish life could just be uncomplicated for once, he thinks, sipping his water and holding Franka's hand in his.  Just once.

 

 

**

 

 

Sally decides to make a show of cooperation.  She provides a car, and permission for Toru and Ishaq to be in it, to pick up Iraia Winner at the airport.

Toru doesn't know what to make of that reversal, so he's chewing over it instead of making nice conversation with their driver as Ishaq does.  It's a nice car, plush leather interior, and a privacy screen between them and the front, with the controls in back under their power.  For Preventers, that's a pretty big apology.  Or the car is bugged and it doesn't matter if the driver can hear them.  It's probably the latter.

Toru makes an effort to rein in his paranoia.  He's spent the last three days inventing ever-weaker excuses to avoid Quatre, and he's feeling twitchy about everything.  Losing the thread on why he thought they had to go to war, or at least pick a fight, with Preventers in the first place.  And, now that the family drama he'd so easily dismissed at first blush is about to walk off a shuttle onto his plate, worried he's drastically underestimated the reserves he'll need to deal with this.  No-- not worried.  Pretty damn sure, actually.

Their driver doesn't seem to worry they'll make an escape into the crowded airport, so they're allowed into the lobby off the baggage claim to stand there with a home-made sign waiting.  Toru feels a little jolt at the sight of every blonde head of hair, peering at every face that passes.  'What do you think she'll be like?' he asks Ishaq.

'Like Quatre,' Ishaq replies serenely.

'I think he said once he wasn't raised with her.  She was old enough to be out of the house by the time he was born.  Mansion.  Whatever they had.'  Toru runs a ragged fingernail over the tender pad of his thumb.  'How do you even raise thirty kids?'

'Not very well, from what he's let slip.'  Ishaq raises his sign hopefully, but the woman he's spotted goes zooming past them for the doors.  'Colonials are different,' he warns Toru.  'It's a strange life up there, even for the well-off.  Don't expect her to understand or behave certain ways.'

'They're not a different species.'

'Not yet,' says Ishaq.  He raises his sign again.  'I think that's her.'

Iraia Winner doesn't look like her brother.  There's a little family resemblance, but it's mostly colouring, the wheat-gold hair, blue eyes.  Her face is softer than Quatre's, more heavily lined from a life of smiling and laughing, and there's very little of Quatre's reserve in her, from her casually wrinkled linen dress and well-used boots, the careless curls that tumble fashionably about her shoulders.  But Toru sees her take a big breath, when she spots them, like she's steeling herself, settling her nerves.  Toru leaves his spot to take her luggage, and offers her a hand.

'I'm Thorulf Peacecraft,' he introduces himself.  'Mrs Winner?'

'Ms,' she corrects, squeezing just the tips of his fingers and stepping back to wrap herself tightly in her bulky wool sweater.  'Peacecraft?' she repeats hesitantly.

'Yes, ma'am.  Are these all your bags?'

'I didn't know how much to pack,' she apologises, clutching her large handbag, though he hadn't tried to take it from her, and hasn't protested the weight of two large suitcases.  'It sounded like I might be here a while?'

'Possibly,' Toru hedges.  'Um, we have a car, I know we said you'd probably have to cab it, but.  This is-- this is Ishaq Khosa, he's one of Quatre's friends.  He doesn't--'

Toru swallows his tongue.  Ishaq did shake her hand, another weak grip from Ms Winner, but Khosa is shaking just slightly behind the polite smile he gives her, and his eyes have dilated and gone black.  That was deliberate, and Toru isn't entirely certain why, or what Ishaq expected to learn from it, but there's nothing Toru can do about it now it's happened, anyway.

Toru clears his throat.  'We'd be happy to drop you off at your hotel to rest awhile, ma'am.'

'I'd rather get this over with.  I mean-- I mean, get-- see-- him.'

Toru can't tell from that if she avoided Quatre's name out of anger or grief.  Either way, not a great sign that she can't bring herself to say it.  'Of course,' he says, and gestures for the doors.  'Right this way.'

The car isn't crowded, exactly, but Toru finds himself seated next to Ms Winner close enough to feel her bodyheat on his arm and leg, with Ishaq facing them from the opposing bench and the baggage stacked beside him.  No-one talks for a while, except in one-word murmurs-- 'Water?' 'Thanks,' and the like.  There's a few flurries of snowflakes in the grey weather, the sun totally obscured by haze hanging over the city, and Ms Winner alternates staring wide-eyed at the sights and wincing and fiddling with a newly-bought pair of sunglasses.

'Have you ever been on Earth, Ms Winner?' Ishaq asks, when she jabs them on finally, her lips bitten pale.

'Once,' she says.  'A long time ago, for work.  It's... disquieting.'

'You'll get used to it after a cycle or two,' Ishaq promises.  'Our circadian rhythms fall into function pretty quickly.  I advise sunscreen, however, even on a dull day like this one.'

'Oh.'  A little moue of distress creases the lines beside her mouth.  'I forgot to bring any, I was rushing so much--'

'We'll get you some,' Toru offers.  'Or, Preventers will.  They can probably dispense it at the medical centre on base.'

That doesn't allay any concerns for her.  Her fingers twist in the strap of her bag.  'You're both... you're both Newtypes?  Like him?'

'Yes,' Ishaq answers, sparing Toru the lie.  'There's about twenty of us, all living at the base together.'

'And that's something that he did.  Find you all.'

'He learnt to use another Newtype's ability,' Toru says.  'A man who-- well, maybe that doesn't matter.  We can locate each other, and there's a way to do that even at a distance.  Quatre figured it out, and used it to find as many Newtypes as he could.'

'Why?'

Ishaq raises his eyebrows.  'Why what?' Toru probes cautiously.  'Why did he try to find all of us?'

'I mean--'  Ms Winner licks her lips.  'Did Preventers threaten him?  Make him do it?'

'There's... I don't think there's an easy-- a yes-or-no answer to that,' Toru says slowly.  'I think it was going to happen one way or another and Quatre cooperated instead of fighting it.'

Whatever she thinks of that, it's impossible to read her face behind those big dark glasses.  Now she looks more like Quatre, the way Quatre had been when Toru had first worked with him in London.  Swallowed up by the world, suffering, hunched in on the weight of it.

And maybe making a decision about cooperation, too.  So Toru says, 'He's doing it voluntarily.  It's all been voluntary, since the beginning, it's just-- that's not really the same thing as there being no duress.  He's stressed out and he's tired and he's scared.  That's why he needs you.'

'He never needed any of us for that,' she replies, suddenly clipped and brittle.  'Where's Trowa?  He hated Preventers, I can't believe he's allowed any of this.'

Ishaq is already wincing.  Toru tries for a neutral game face.  'Mr Barton lives in Paris,' he says.  'With his partner.'

'Partner.'  He can see the moment it registers.  'Trowa-- they're not together?'

'Not since they were eighteen.'

'I didn't know.'  Her hands clench on her bag.  'I just-- assumed.'

'No, ma'am.'

There's an uneasy silence, then.  Ms Winner goes back to staring out the window.  Toru bends his gaze toward Ishaq, catching his eyes, but before he can pose a silent question, Ishaq is shaking his head.  With that, Toru has to be content.  Ishaq would have to answer him verbally, after all, and it would be pretty hard to hide what they were doing with Ms Winner right there.

They take the scenic route across base to Medical, probably a courtesy for Ms Winner, or a bit of decorative deception.  Lots of trees, the memorial, winter roses, the spruce office buildings where the Director and her staff work, not the worn old barracks where Preventers do their actual living.  There's no real harm in wanting to present the best face of Preventers, and Toru has enough unresolved guilt to resist stacking evidence against Preventers until she can decide for herself how bad her brother's situation is.  Still, it irks him a little how hard everyone is dancing.  It's exhausting trying to keep up with all, and he's tired of being tired of it.

Franka greets them in the lobby of the hospital, suggesting their driver took advantage of the privacy screen to send an ETA.  But she's smiling, and Toru relaxes a little seeing that.  There's no secrets there, at least none that have the potential to harm.  It's nice there's someone in the world happy to see him.

'Good morning,' she greets them as a group, though the twinkle in her eye is all for Toru.  'Dr Winner?  I'm so pleased to meet you.  I can escort you straight upstairs, or directly to a consult with Dr Mahtan, Mr Winner's primary.'

'I'd like to have a few minutes with the patient to make my own observations first,' Ms Winner-- Doctor Winner, and Toru wonders why she didn't correct him about her title until he glances down at her hand, finally putting together the correction she had made with the pale patch of skin on her ring finger that indicates a wedding band sat there until pretty recently.  That's not going to help with anything, he thinks resignedly.

The ride up the lift is a little awkward, eased only somewhat by Franka's report on Quatre's vitals, taken only an hour ago, but once the doors spit them out into an empty corridor, Toru falls back with Ishaq for a report of his own.  Ishaq lingers near a water fountain, and Toru lounges against the wall, checking for eyes, ears, psychic or physical.  At his nod, Ishaq says, 'I think I need to admit I miscalculated.'

Toru bites his lips together against the curse that wants to escape.  It's too late to point out he'd objected-- and not especially helpful to point out he'd also agreed.  'Specifics?'

'She's not going to be here long.  She'll be back in Space before long.  She's pregnant.'

'Pregnant?'  That and the missing wedding ring make for interesting maths, but it's none of Toru's business.  But a leap of logic hits him, then, and somehow he's absolutely sure.  'She's worried her kid is going to be a Newtype.'

Ishaq opens his mouth, then shuts it.  'That's why she came,' he murmurs.  'To ask Quatre.  To figure her odds.'

'And to see for herself that Preventers is locking up Newtypes just for existing.  Shit.'  Toru scrapes his fingers through his hair.  'This isn't going to help anything, is it.'

'Maybe she'll fight harder for Quatre, if she's worried it could happen to her own child.'

'Or she'll keep quiet and stay low, so Preventers don't have a reason to go after her.'

'Toru?'  It's Franka, peering out beyond Quatre's door.  'Anything I can get for you?'

'No, we're coming.'  Toru pushes himself upright.  'Starting planning for an alternative.'

Quatre had prepared for the visit.  He's wearing clothes, not a hospital gown, and it's a jolt seeing him in a suit, when Toru's become accustomed to casual shirts and jumpers the past few years.  It's a faintly ridiculous image, a man in a suit and tie reclining on a gurney, shined shoes lined up precisely with the footboard.  Iraia Winner has his chart in hand, and she's studying the monitor on the wall looking over the past week of cardiac rhythm and blood pressure.  As Toru finds a spot by the window to hand about out of the way, Dr Winner accepts a stethoscope from Franka, and speaks to the air somewhat to the left of Quatre.

'Please open your shirt,' she says.

Quatre obeys without comment.  He flips his tie over a shoulder and undoes three buttons, enough for his sister to insert the drum between layers of fabric and rest it against his heart.  Almost.  She pulls back at the last second, and breathes on the chestpiece.  To warm it.  When she presses it to Quatre's skin, his eyelashes flutter for a moment, not quite a flinch.  He doesn't look at her any more than she's looking at him.  Are there any Newtypes who don't have a lifetime of practise at that shuttered, stoic loneliness?  Life on base in Newtype Central isn't perfect, but at least they have each other.

'Heartbeat's irregular and a little fast,' Dr Winner murmurs, stepping back as soon as possible.  'Any faintness?'

'Not over the past two days,' Quatre answers politely.

'Sleeping?'

'I don't make it through the night.  I never have.'

'Pain, or general restlessness?  Just thinking?'

'Just thinking,' Quatre says, subdued.  But his eyes focus, and they focus on Toru.  Toru doesn't give any outward sign, at least he thinks not, but he doesn't need to, with a man who can read what's going on inside of him.  Quatre knows he knows about the cancer.  It rests there, wordlessly acknowledged, a blink of a moment.  Then Quatre looks away from him, too.

Some instinct kicks in, though, and Toru decides-- no.  So he leaves his corner and sits on the edge of Quatre's bed.  He puts a casual hand on Quatre's knee.  Quatre's gasp is smothered under a relatively calm smile, but Toru can feel him tensing.  He's a little tense himself.  He thinks, firmly and quietly, _I haven't forgiven you yet.  But I'm not angry.  Not really.  And I'm here.  Let me help._

The heart monitor beats a few times.  But Toru knows what it means.  Knows what it means, too, when Quatre convulsively squeezes his hand.

Dr Winner clears her throat.  'Your recovery is within expected parametres, but I'd like to see more solid numbers.  You should be on a gentle exercise regimen, and I'd like you to raise the amount of sodium in your diet for a couple of weeks to stabilise your BP.  And I'd like to get you in a more controlled environment.  I'm worried about your breathing.  You're at risk for hospital-contracted pneumonia.'

Franka jolts at that, and for a second Toru can't tell if she's insulted or concerned.  Maybe both.  'We have been monitoring him, Doctor.'

'But you've never had a patient with a history of exposure to unknown contaminants,' Dr Winner retorts shortly.  'My request for access to the chemical structure of this "serum" you have him taking was denied, but it's clearly a neurotoxin.'  She removes a pen from her purse and lifts Quatre's hands.  'Tell me which finger registers more pressure,' she instructed, pressing the tip of the pen into his fingerpad.  Quatre's brow furrows in concentration, and then a note of worry.

'I'm not sure,' he says, when she's gone through all five digits from small finger to thumb.

'I'm going to try again.  Pressure, not pain.'

'Forefinger,' Quatre says, hesitating.

'In the moment or because it was one of the last ones?'

'I-- don't know.'

They repeat the show with his other hand, and then go through all ten toes, and then she tests his muscle strength and resistance, his sensitivity to temperature with a rod that produces heat and cold in turns.  Quatre sits in his stockings, his shirt still open and sagging as his sister annotates his chart.  'Evidence of peripheral neuropathy and myopathy,' Dr Winner tells the room.  'He should have had routine testing all along to establish controls.'

'I know he sees a doctor on base,' Franka says.  'I can get his full record disclosed to you.'

'Do so,' Dr Winner orders brusquely, though Toru offers a smile to take the edge of it off.  Franka returns it with a twitch of her lips as she leaves immediately.

'It's not her fault,' Quatre says softly.

Dr Winner's pen slows momentarily.  'It's yours, if you didn't report symptoms as they arose.'

'If I recognised it as a symptom, I would have done.'

'When in doubt, report it.'

Quatre keeps his mouth shut, letting that one pass in silence.  When Dr Winner flips a page and asks him, 'Memory loss?' his reply is a hunched-shouldered shrug, and Toru watches her translate that to a clear 'yes' on the page.  'I'm ordering tests,' she tells him.  'We're past first-tier testing to determine whether exposure occurred.  I want to get straight at second-tier testing to determine the scope of damage.  The heart attack could be read as unrelated or directly related to the build-up of susceptibility factors related to this serum.  What are you on right now?'

'On?  Dosage?  Just the fluids for hydration and a mild sleep aid.'

'I saw that in the chart.  I mean what are you really on?  Because there's no way for you to be this normal without chemical assistance.'  Dr Winner tosses the chart onto the bed at Quatre's feet.  'There's three people in here right now.  Four with the nurse.  You would have been unconscious by now if you weren't being-- I don't know.  Medicated.  Boosted.  Something.'

'It's the presence of other Newtypes,' Toru says carefully.  It's not Newtypes, really, that does the trick; it's Newtykes, and even with Toru in the room Quatre probably has a headache and a little mental whiplash trying to keep up with all the noise of active minds surrounding him.  At the least Toru expects him to look a little queasy, but maybe Quatre's so caught up in the chilly back-and-forth with his sister he hasn't had time to feel the full effect--

Newtyke.  There's not just one Newtyke in the room.  There's two.  Toru and the one growing in Iraia Winner's belly.  And as soon as he thinks it Toru tries to erase the thought from his mind, but Quatre's head snaps up, his eyes wide, and then he's staring at his sister, pinched and white, and she reaches out for his wrist to take his pulse before the words go tripping off Quatre's suddenly loosened tongue, shocked into a whisper.

'Who was it?'

Dr Winner freezes in place.  Her fingers slip away, retract into a shaking fist.

Then the door opens, and Dr Mahtan steps in, Franka at his heels.  'Dr Winner, good afternoon,' he says jovially.  'I heard you had some questions about Quatre's medical record?'

'Yes,' she manages, and turns on her heel.  She doesn't look back as she leaves.


End file.
